


Highschool Never Ends

by JupiterMelichios



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Doom Patrol (Comics), Secret Six, Teen Titans (Comics), Teen Titans - All Media Types, Young Justice (Comics)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Bruce is somehow an official foster carer, Canon Queer Character, Coming Out, Dick Grayson's redhead fetish, Everyone is Bi because Titans, F/F, F/M, Foster Care, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Klingon, M/M, Milkman Man, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Performance Art, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Public Display of Affection, Referenced teacher/student relationship, References to Drugs, Romeo and Juliet References, Roy Harper is a slut in every universe, Terry Long is a goddamn creep in every universe, Theater Club, Theater Kids, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Underage Drinking, Wrestling, drama club, it's the one constant, meta jokes, trans jason todd, wtnv references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:44:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JupiterMelichios/pseuds/JupiterMelichios
Summary: Everyone at school knows the Wayne kids. They're the loud angry queer foster family, and if you fuck with one of them, you'd better be prepared for the whole family to fuck you back.





	1. If I was a teacher I would resign if Tim Drake got put in my class

**Author's Note:**

> I've had writers block every since I finished my Toyko Ghoul x Batman AU, so I gave myself permission to write whatever the fuck I wanted without any consequences, and this was what I got.
> 
> Title comes from Bowling for soup, obviously. To get the perfect soundtrack for this fic, play 'Highschool Never Ends' and then let Spotify/Youtube take you on a cheesy pop-punk journey. This doesn't officially take place in the early 2000s, but it also doesn't not officially take place in the early 2000s.
> 
> Oh and this is deliberately and unironically one of those stupid high-school AUs where everyone's queerer and cooler and more knowledgable about sex than any 17 year old has ever been in reality, because I love those AUs.
> 
> Ages have been shifted around so that Dick and Tim's generations of Titans are now within a couple of years of one another. As a rule, if they were on the OG or New Titans they're Seniors, if they were one of the babies on the New Titans like Gar then they're Juniors, and if they were on Tim's version of the team they're Sophomores.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comics fan-writers have a bad habit of assuming that every reader is familiar with every character (and knows where to look for more information if they're not), which I know from personal experience isn't the case, so I'm going to go back through this fic and add a dramatic personae to the beginning to each chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
>  
> 
> Dick - _Dick Grayson/Nightwing, the first Robin. Batfamily & Titan. Senior_  
> Wally - _Wally West/Flash, the first Kid Flash. Flash Family & Titan. Senior_  
> Donna - _Donna Troy/Troia, the first Wondergirl. Wonder Family & Titan. Senior_  
> Donna's creepy teacher boyfriend - _Terry Long, who married Donna when she was 19 and he was 35_  
>  Tim - _Tim Drake/Red Robin, the third Robin. Batfamily & Titan. Sophomore_  
> Bart - _Bart Allen/Flash, the first Impulse and later second Kid Flash. Flash Family & Titan. Sophomore_  
> Con/Conner K - _Connor Kent/Superboy, the first Superboy. Super Family & Titan. Sophomore_  
> Jason - _Jason Todd/Red Hood, the second Robin. Batfamily. Junior_  
>  Bruce - _Bruce Wayne/Batman. Batfamily_

Dick's eating lunch alone (he only shares a lunch period with Wally and Donna this year, and Wally's sick and Donna's busy fucking her creepy teacher boyfriend in a supply closet somewhere), trying to finish his food as quickly as he can so that he can go finish the homework he swore to Bruce he'd finished last night before English class this afternoon, when he feels the table rock and looks up to see Tim's friend Bart, the tiny skinny one who everyone says will probably make the Olympic track team when he's 18, staring at him with his big brown eyes.

“Your brother has a knife.”

Dick waits a minute to see if a punchline or a question is forthcoming, and when one isn't he just nods. “I know.”

“Con says someone should do something about it before someone gets hurt,” Bart adds, still staring.

“What and you think it's gonna be me? I am getting into a knife fight with Tim right around never, kid.”

Bart nods. “That's fair. Do you think I should ask Jason?”

Jason and Tim have this... thing, that Dick's going to politely call 'tension'. He's actually not sure whether they're going to end up fucking, killing one another, or going on some kind of vigilante crime spree together, but definitely one of the three. “Depends whether the idea of getting shanked by Jason upsets you more than the idea of getting shanked by Tim.”

Jason doesn't always carry a knife, but then he's 6'2” of solid muscle, so that's mostly because he knows he doesn't need one any more. He and Tim come from very different but equally fucked up backgrounds, and one of the only things they'd bonded over back in the days when Jason couldn't stand the sight of his newest foster-brother was their continued resistance to Bruce's desire to disarm them.

(Bruce gave up in the end and sent them both for – separate – weapons-based martial arts training, because knowing how to pick your battles is rule one of fostering the kids to fucked up for anyone else to take them.)

“Tim is scarier than Jason,” Bart says thoughtfully, “but Jason would definitely be more willing to injure me. Also, Jason attacking me with a knife would definitely be less hot than Tim doing it.”

Dick squints at him. “Are you screwing my little brother?” he asks. He doesn't necessarily mean it to sound threatening, but it sort of comes out that way anyway.

“No. He says he thinks of me as either his brother or his son. I'm pretty sure that means he's not interested.”

“Probably,” Dick agrees, although it is Tim so who knows. He does his best not to know too much about Tim or Jason's sex lives, but he knows enough not to rule out any weird kinks when it comes to Tim. “Maybe.”

“Do you think we should do anything about Tim's knife?”

Dick remembers Tim's first night with them. He'd seemed like a nice kid, no hint of why so many foster families rejected him, right up until Bruce had explained the no weapons in the house rule. It had taken them hours to get Tim out of the closet he'd barricaded himself in, and Bruce had needed seven stitches by the time it was over. “Definitely not. He's not going to stab anyone who doesn't deserve it.”

Bart nods. “Yeah, probably true. Thanks, Dick.”

As he skips away (not literally, but Dick wouldn't actually be surprised) Dick makes a mental note to talk to Tim about fucking concealed carry. If Tim gets expelled, Bruce is gonna be _pissed_.


	2. Obviously Booster Gold is going to be the coolest teacher in the school

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
> _I'm only including characters who first appear in each chapter, otherwise some of these would get crazy long_
> 
> Cass - _Cassandra Cain/Black Bat, formerly the second Batgirl. Bat Family. Sophomore_  
>  Harper - _Harper Row/Bluebird. Bat Family. Sophomore_  
>  Roy - _Roy Harper/Arsenal, formerly the first Speedy. Arrow Family & Titan. Senior_  
> Connor H - _Connor Hawke/Red Arrow, formerly the second Green Arrow. Arrow Family & JLA. Junior_  
> Steph - _Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, formerly (and/or latterly depending on how you're counting) the third Batgirl & fourth Robin. Bat Family. Sophomore_  
> Cassie - _Cassandra Sandsmark/the second Wondergirl. Wonder Family & Titan. Sophomore_  
> Lori - _Lori Zechlin/Black Alice. Secret Six. Junior_  
>  Bane - _Bane. Secret Six (and Bat Villain)_  
>  Kori - _Koridand'r/Kori Anders/Starfire. Titan. Senior_  
>  Vic - _Victor Stone/Cyborg. Titan. Senior_  
>  Gar - _Garfield Logan/Beast Boy. Titan & Doom Patrol. Junior_  
> Jaime - _Jaime Reyes/the third Blue Beetle. Titan. Sophomore._  
>  Mal - _Mal Duncan/Guardian, formerly like 12 different identities mainly Hornblower. Titan. Senior_  
>  Karen - _Karen Beecher/Bumblebee. Titan. Senior_  
>  Babs - _Barbara Gordon/Oracle, formerly the first Batgirl. Bat Family & Bird of Prey_  
> Mr Kord - _Ted Kord/the second Blue Beetle. JLA_  
>  Mr Carter - _Michael Carter/Booster Gold. JLA_

Jason, despite what numerous social workers, teachers, psychologists and failed foster-parents have said over the years, doesn't start shit. He will, however, admit to escalating it.

Cass isn't even that broken up about some asshole teacher getting on her case for kissing Harper in the corridor between classes. Yeah, she's pissed at the injustice of it, when straight couples never get that kind of telling off, but she doesn't want to do anything about it. Jason's really fucking bad at not doing anything though, ask anyone.

He and Roy both get detention when Mrs Shneyder catches them making out on one of the picnic benches, but he spends half his life in detention and Roy's nearly as bad, so that's whatever. Plus when people hear about what he's doing, the queer kids (and some of the more liberal straight ones) are all in favor.

Connor H is a beautiful idiot who doesn't seem to want to make out with anyone, even though everyone in the fucking school wants into his pants, but he seems to get a particular kind of delight out of pushing the rules exactly as far as they'll go without breaking, so Jason spends most of the next week walking around holding hands with him.

Steph somehow persuades Cassie that it would be a good idea to make out with her in the cafeteria, and Jason gets to watch Conner K do his best not to faint from boner-induced light-headedness.

Dick, Wally and Roy do something in a broom cupboard that gets them detention for a month, and Jay can't get out of any of them what it was, but the rumors start at Roy doing coke off of Dick's ass and only get wilder from there.

Lori tells her tells her extended family about it, and for a glorious week, she gets picked up from school by a parade of different queer couples and trios, all of whom make a point of swapping spit right there in front of the school gates before they let Lori get into the car. Jason makes a mental note to get to know Lori better, because her family are awesome, and her uncle Bane (apparently he used to be a pro-wrestler and now everyone calls him by his stage name to the point Lori admits she doesn't even know what his real name is) is ridiculously hot.

Kori doesn't seem to really get what they're going for beyond PDAs, so spends the week cheerfully making out with absolutely anyone she feels like. It doesn't do much to further the cause, but it's fucking hilarious to watch Dick slowly lose his mind when she keeps not choosing him.

Vic starts just carrying Gar everywhere, like the boy doesn't have two working feet, which Gar is 100% into because he's a spoiled little princess with a really unsubtle strength kink.

Jaime Reyes, shy kid who comes along to GSA meetings but never says anything, spends the whole week with his hands in his boyfriend's pockets, looking adorably nervous and defiant about the whole thing.

Mal and Karen are like the straightest people Jay's ever met, but they're also sweethearts, so of course they spend their allowances on a load of 'love is love' shirts that they give out to everyone who wants one.

Jason has a hell of a lot of fun watching the chaos he started unfold, but he knows it's got to come to an end sometime and he wants to go out with a bang.

He tells Tim this, on one of the days when they're actually talking to one another, and Tim gives him one of those weird unreadable stares of his and says “I'd be down for blowing you in a supply closet but Roy and Wally already did that.”

“Seriously, that was what they were doing?!”

“While Dick jerked off and 'lost his fucking mind over how hot they looked'. Direct quote there.”

“Jesus, he really has got a thing for read-heads, huh.”

“After Roy, Wally, Kori and his eternal crush on Babs, are you seriously surprised any more?”

“Not really, I just think it's weird to be that picky, you know?”

“There's nothing wrong with having standards.”

Jason glares at the little freak over the rim of his coke glass. “Fucking really? Do you or do you not want to put Bart on his knees and fuck his mouth until he chokes on your dick?”

“Obviously. But I don't want to do that to everyone I find even vaguely attractive like you do. Hence, standards.”

“You're just jealous because I got more game than you. Help me figure out how we can simultaneously horrify the entire teaching staff, expose their homophobia and not get expelled. That doesn't involve taking photos of Donna and her perv.”

“Well, there go my three best ideas. Want me to walk you to class on a leash like an asshole who thinks misogyny is a kink at the mall with his girlfriend?”

Tim has Views on both misogyny and people who give BDSM a bad name. It's one of Jason's top three favorite things about him.

“I think the staff are mostly too vanilla to get that, bro.”

“Yeah, probably. Want me to a steal a cheerleading outfit and climb Conner K like a tree outside the Principle's office?”

“I mean, I'm not sure that's exactly what I was going for but if that's what you're into, go for it.”

“If I wanted to wear mini-skirts, I'd be doing it already. You probably have a point though – they'd just get hung up on the cross-dressing and miss the point. Want Roy to bend you over one of the picnic tables and eat you out till you cry?”

“Always, but I'm trying not to get expelled.”

They don't think of anything suitable, but it doesn't matter in the end. Jason gets drawn out of the cafeteria by the sound of cheering at lunch the next day and finds Mr Kord the shop teacher kissing the hell out of Jason's Econ teacher Mr Carter, while the Principle stares and nearly has an apoplexy.

Rumor is they nearly both get fired, but based on Mr Carter's shit-eating grin in class later on, they definitely both thought it was worth it.


	3. The Secret Six are #goals honestly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The secret six is one big polycule and Bane daddy-dom's anyone who stands still long enough for it, and you can't persuade me otherwise.
> 
> I asked Gail Simone on twitter a while back what Scandal Kay and Lianna were going to call their daughter, and she said Barda, so little baby Barda it is.
> 
> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
> Scandal - _Scandal Savage. Secret Six_  
>  Kay - _Kay/Knockout. Secret Six_  
>  Liana - _Liana Kerzner. Secret Six_  
>  Thomas - _Thomas Blake/Catwoman. Secret Six_  
>  Floyd - _Floyd Lawton/Deadshot. Secret Six & Suicide Squad_  
> Jeanette - _Jeanette. Secret Six_  
>  Ragdoll - _Peter Merkel Jr/the second Ragdoll. Secret Six_  
>  Kani - _Kani/Kevin/Porcelain. Secret Six_  
>  Mary - _Mary Turner/Strix. Secret Six_  
>  Mr Dibney - _Ralph Dibney/Elongated Man. Secret Six & JLA_  
> Mrs Dibney - _Sue Dibney_

Lori's family let her invite basically anyone she wants to her birthday party, all her friends, and all her friends' friends. Lori being Lori, that means the entire theatre club, all of the other goth kids and most of the GSA, so basically everyone Jason knows.

It's at her parent's house, but her entire extended family attend, and honestly, Jason is kinda in love with all of them. There's Scandal (apparently pro-wrestling runs in the family) Kay and Lianna, who are a trio, and their adorable kid Barda, and Barda's dad Thomas and his boyfriend Floyd and Floyd's girlfriend Jeanette, and Bane who is definitely someone's Dom but Jason can't work out whose, and Ragdoll who is the creepiest person Jason's ever met and makes him want to start watching wrestling immediately, and Lori's pibling Kani, and a horrifically scarred person called Mary who communicates in angry sign language and emphatic gestures.

Lori's dad and Floyd take it in turns at the grill, turning out fucking amazing burgers at such a rate that even all the teenagers can't keep up, and her mom has alternatives for every fucking dietary requirement you can think of, vegan and gluten free and dairy free and kosher and everything else. The adults hand out beers to anyone over 16 and just laugh at the shocked expressions on the teenagers' faces.

“You gotta learn how to drink sometime,” Floyd says, “or else you'll end up as much of a lightweight as Thomas.”

“I thought you liked that I'm a cheap date,” Thomas yells from the other side of the yard. He's sitting in Bane's lap on a picnic blanket, and Ragdoll is sitting in _his_ lap, talking seriously to Tim and Lillith about something.

“You know that just him calling you a slut, right?” Kani asks, and Floyd nods and Thomas grins and says “Hell yeah I am,” and then Jason gets to watch his face when Barda asks “Daddy, what's a slut?” and it's fantastic.

It's a weird atmosphere, half old-fashioned family party, with Mr Dibney in suit pants and a cardigan and Mrs Dibney handing out snacks like she's June Cleaver, half college party, with everyone drinking and making out, but Jason's pretty into it.

About seven, Roy asks Mr Dibney politely if he minds if they get stoned, and Mr Dibney laughs and says he doesn't care as long as they keep it out of the house and away from Barda.

Roy being Roy has brought enough for everyone (in his words “what's the point of being adopted by a super-rich ageing hippy if you don't use it to score drugs”) and by the time it starts getting dark everyone's pretty mellow, even the people who choose not to smoke getting into the chilled vibe.

Somehow Bart and Tim persuade Scandal and 'Doll to show them some moves, and Jason is taking back everything he ever thought about wrestling just being fake because they're both scary as shit and 'Doll can bend in ways that shouldn't even be possible for a human. Then 'Doll persuades Bane to fight him, which Jason is pretty sure is basically foreplay for them and honestly, Jason's pretty into that. He always gets kinda horny when he's stoned, and Bane is fucking _ripped_.

He's ended up on the picnic blanket with Thomas, and he must be staring because Thomas grins and says “I am a lucky lucky man.”

“Fuck yeah you are,” Jason agrees. “Is 'Doll...?” He's not sure what he's trying to say except that he's imagining all the things you could do with someone that fucking flexible.

Thomas laughs. “He doesn't fuck, but honestly when you're as kinky as 'Doll who even needs sex, you know?”

Jason can't really imagine not wanting to fuck people, but he totally gets how sometimes the kinky shit is the best bit. “What about Bane?”

“He's ace too, but he's a total service-top, so he's pretty much always up for throwing me around and fingering me till I cry,” Thomas says, sounding smug. Not that Jason can blame him. If he had a Dom that hot he'd totally be smug too.

The wrestling devolves into a weight-lifting contest at some point, and Thomas gets up to go try and out-bench press Scandal, which totally isn't happening but Jason's pretty into watching him try. Into both of them to be honest, because obviously-gay women aren't usually his speed (he likes people who might like him back) but Scandal is fucking hot, and based on the blushing, Liana and Kay definitely agree with him.

When Scandal's beaten Thomas, Floyd, Mary, Dick and Roy, Bane steps up to the plate and fucking bench-presses _Scandal_ , while Scandal giggles like a schoolgirl.

Dick comes to flop down on the rug beside Jason, grinning and happy despite his defeat.

“This is awesome,” he says happily, leaning his head on Jason's shoulder. “It's like... like looking at our future you know? This is totally going to be us in like ten years time.”

Jason's way too cynical and way to damaged to expect much from the future, but looking around the party he can't help feeling a little bit optimistic. These people are all queer, and pretty obviously damaged, and none of them have 'proper' jobs, and they're _happy_. They love and support one another and they're doing an awesome job of raising Lori and Barda, and Jason wants that for his family. “That sounds pretty good.”

Dick tips over so he's flat on his back grinning at Jason upside-down. “I know. I can't fucking wait.”

And the thing is, Jason can't either.


	4. Romeo and Fucking Juliet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't actually hate R&J, but I imagine if you teach high-school drama you get very sick of it very quickly
> 
> Klingon courtships involve the male reading love poetry while the female roars and throws things at him. I'm sure you can all see how that would improve the balcony scene.
> 
> Thanks to CelestialBisexual for being my sounding board and helping me cast.
> 
> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
> Basil - _Basil Karlo/the first Clayface. Batfamily & Batman Villain_  
> Axel - _Axel Walker/Trickster. Flash Rogue. Junior_  
>  Cisco - _Cisco Ramone/Paco Ramone/Vibe. Sophomore_  
>  Hiro - _Hiro Okamura/Toyman. Freshman_  
>  Kyle - _Kyle Rayner/the fifth Green Lantern. JLA & Lanterns. Junior_  
> Shawn - _Shawn Tsang/Defacer. Senior_  
>  Courtney - _Courtney Whitmore/Stargirl. JSA. Junior_  
>  Kulap - _Kulap Vilaysack/Katharsis. The Movement. Senior_  
>  Miguel - _Miguel Barragan/Bunker. Titan. Sophomore_  
>  Bette - _Bette Kane/Flamebird. Titan. Senior_  
>  Duela - _Duela Dent/Harlequin, formerly Jokers Daughter. Titan. Senior_  
>  Don - _Donald Hall/Dove. Titan. Senior_

Basil looks round at the assembled kids. There are always plenty who showed up to the first couple of meetings of the semester, and once they realize they aren't going to get to play the lead, half of them will quit. Still it's a good turnout all the same.

This is going to be their last production for the seniors, and it's good to see so many of them back for one last show.

As well as the aspiring actors, which he's never short of, it's especially relieving to see so many of the stage crew back. There's Axel who runs lights, and a freshman called Harper who he's grooming as his replacement. Tim Drake, who despite only being a Sophomore is the best damn SM he's ever had. Cisco runs the sound boards, and Hiro can fix anything electronic and is great at special effects. Kyle has another year to go, thank god because he's the best set designer they had, but they're about to lose their wardrobe mistress Shawn.

“Good to see so many of you back,” he says, smiling around at them, “and some new faces! For anyone who doesn't already know, I'm Mr Karlo. Yes I was in some terrible B-movies in my youth, and don't worry if you haven't seen them, I haven’t yet figured out how to stop them being shown at every single wrap party, so stick around and you’ll get your chance.

“First meeting of the semester means it's time to pick our show. We did a musical last semester, so it's a play this time. Any ideas?”

“The cherry orchard?” suggests a nervous looking Freshman Basil doesn't know, and then blushes bright red when the older students laugh.

“You weren't to know,” Basil says kindly, “but we have a strict no Russian dramatists rule. Partly because they're depressing as hell, but mostly because teenagers liking Ibsen is a guaranteed sign they're a pod person.”

“Or a Midwitch Cuckoo.”

“Yes, thank you Tim. Or a cuckoo. Or the thing from The Thing. Some kind of alien being masquerading as a teenager. So I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt this time since you didn’t know, but I will be watching you closely for suspicious behavior. Now, do any non-aliens have any suggestions?”

“Yes!” Tim Drake says brightly, and Basil groans. “I think we should do…”

“Don’t say it!”

“Equus! It won two Tony awards and...”

“The parent-teacher association said Les Mis was too risque - they’re definitely not going to go for you, buck naked, talking about having sex with horses for 2 hours.”

“Actually I was assuming Gar would take the lead.”

“That doesn’t help.” He suggests it every single time, because the Wayne kids are, to a one, absolute little shits.

“Lysistrata?” Harper suggests. “It’s a classic.”

“We won’t get approval for anything Greek. Not after the Medea incident. It took a month for the hall to stop smelling of burning hair, and we still haven’t got the bloodstains out of the stage.”

“It’s going to be Shakespeare,” Gar says. “We’re never going to get approval for anything else so we might as well resign ourselves.”

“Oooh, Midsummer Night’s Dream!”

“We did it two years ago.”

“And Dick and Roy still aren’t allowed back in Drama club,” Jason adds, proudly.

“They’re lucky they were allowed back into the school, never mind theater club! Come on people, if no one offers me any better suggestions I’ll make you do Henry VIII, don’t think I won’t.”

“That’s not even a real play.” Cisco has no real interest in theater, he's just good with a mixing board.

“Oh sweet summer child. Treasure your ignorance, for it is your shield.”

“Merchant of Venice is fun,” Donna says.

“ _Portia_ is fun. Trying to do Shylock without being anti-Semitic is not.”

“Taming of the Shrew?”

“No way,” Courtney says at once. “I’m not getting stuck with Bianca. She has no good lines at all.”

“To get the part you’d need to audition for it,” Basil points out, but it’s not like she’s wrong. Courtney isn’t just one of their best performers, she’s one of the only blondes in theater club this year, and Bianca really does need to be blonde. “But I'm going to have to pass on the misogyny as well.”

“Oh fuck,” Kulap says, flopping back into her chair. “It’s going to be Romeo and fucking Juliet isn’t it?”

“Language,” Basil says, even though privately he agrees. Romeo and fucking Juliet. “At least if we play it safe this time we might get to do something more controversial than Oklahoma for next year’s musical.”

“Maybe we could do something different with it?” Gar suggests.

“If you say modern setting I will kill you and then myself,” Tim says.

“Future setting?” Jason suggests, but Basil knows he’s only saying it to annoy his brother. “Romeo and Juliet are part of warring alien races, battling for control of the planet Verona.”

“So who’s the Prince then?”

“I don’t know. Captain Picard?”

“I don’t think anyone’s done Klingon Romeo and Juliet yet,” Tim says. “And I’m pretty sure I’ve got a Klingon dictionary at home somewhere.”

“The balcony scene would definitely be improved by Juliet throwing things at Romeo instead of just gazing longingly,” Harper puts in. “And I know where we can get some replica Bat’leths.”

“This is going to be my last show,” Donna says. “I'm not performing it in Klingon.”

“Well we've got to do _something_ interesting with it.”

“Make it gay.”

“That’s your solution for everything Miguel.”

“Yeah, but think about it - teenagers falling in love, but their parents would kill them if they found out… it writes itself!”

“I’ve no issues in principle, but we’re already going to struggle to find female speaking roles without you making Juliet male as well.”

“Make it lesbian?” Harper suggests, to to amusement of the others.

“I don't see what's wrong with the show as written,” Bette says.

“She's got a point,” Shawn agrees. “Potential Juliets, put your hand up if you'd like a beautiful dress?” About half their female actors put their hands up, including Duela, and Basil entertains himself with the idea of actually casting her as the romantic lead. She looks like a young Nancy Reagan decided to become a goth and join the circus, speaks with a strong Gotham accent, and if she was arrested for murder tomorrow tomorrow Basil wouldn't even blink. “Potential Romeos, how many of you want a sword fight?”

Don is the only one to not put his hand up, even though he's Basil’s personal pick for the role. He hates any kind of conflict, has to be prodded and persuaded through even the simplest fight scene, but he's a solid actor, he's decent looking, and crucially, it's his final year and he's never had the lead.

If only kicking Dick and Roy out of drama club hadn't been a condition of their remaining at the school. Dick’s good looks would make him an excellent Romeo and Roy would make a phenomenal Mercutio. At least they still had Dick’s brother Jason, who had quite possibly been grown in a vat somewhere for the express purpose of playing Tybalt.

Donna and Courtney would duke it out for Juliet, but in the end it would probably go to Courtney, who lacked the comic timing to take one of the character roles like the nurse. Rosalind would go to Kori. She didn't care whether she got a speaking part, and a really stunning Rosalind always added added bit of weight to the central love story.

No one is especially enthused about Romeo and Juliet, but they'll have fun once they get going and for one last production they have the cast and crew they need to make it something special.


	5. Milkman Man is the DCU's Ronnie Soak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Doom Patrol references here are mainly to the current Young Animals series, although you don't need to be reading this to understand it. Or at least having read it won't make this any easier to understand.
> 
> Constantine: The Hellblazer made WTNV references fair game in the DCU, so yes, that is a WTNV reference.
> 
> We will be coming back to Duella's parents at some point, but anyone who's familiar with Pre-52 earth 3 can probably guess who they are.
> 
> And finally, the line that Terry sings is from an actual song. It's one my mum taught me as a vocal warm up, and the full words are "C-O-F-F-E coffee's much strong than tea, young folks should leave it alone, for it makes you skin and bone, better by far to be simply a drinker of tea"
> 
> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
> Danny - _Danny the Street. Doom Patrol_  
>  Pru - _Prudence Wood. League of Assassins_  
>  Casey - _Casey Brinke/Space Case/Doodle-Bug. Doom Patrol_  
>  Terry - _Terry None. Brotherhood of Dada_  
>  Milkman Man - _Milkman Man. I guess he's Doom Patrol affiliated, but he's mostly just weird_  
>  Lotion - _Lotion the Cat. Again arguably Doom Patrol but most he's just Casey sentient anthropomorphic cat_  
>  Cliffe - _Clifford Steele/Robotman. Doom Patrol_  
>  Jane - _Kay Challis/Crazy Jane. Doom Patrol_

The Street is Tim's favorite place to go after school. It's a tiny place on the edge of Robinson Park run by expat Londoner and self proclaimed elder-gay, Danny.

It's not a coffee shop, because the one time sometime tried to order a latte Danny had told them they could have “coffee with milk, coffee without milk, or a kick up the arse”, and it's not a restaurant (although Danny will generally make Tim a sandwich if he asks, because he thinks Tim's too thin). The thing it reminds Tim of most is the milk bar from clockwork orange, although that may just be the mannequins.

Steph and Conner K both refuse to go there because the mannequins and the artwork freak them out, but Bart likes the milkshakes and Harper says Danny’s ability to correctly gender everyone who comes in balances out the creepy, and Pru is as unfazed by the decor as she is by every other weird thing in Tim’s life.

Today he's alone, but he doesn't mind. He knows all the regulars at this point, so there’s always have someone to talk to.

Danny’s daughter Casey is in one of the booths when he arrives, gazing dreamily at her girlfriend Terry while Terry talks about her latest ad campaign.

They both look round when Tim comes in, and Casey waves.

“Hey guys, how's Milkman Man?”

Milkman man is the local milkman, despite the fact that cities haven't had Milkmen since the 60s. Tim's asked around and no one remembers ever paying him for the milk he brings, but just about everyone in Midtown seems to get a delivery from him every day.

He's also, according to them, Casey and Terry’s son, even though he looks to be the same age as them.

“He's good,” Casey says. “He's gone bowling with Lotion.”

(Lotion insists he's not a furry, but Tim has never seen him not wearing the head from an, admittedly very high quality, cat fursuit. He otherwise dresses like a greaser, and seems to mostly live on Casey’s couch.)

“I didn't know there still was a bowling alley in Gotham.”

“It's members only,” Casey days.

“Very exclusive,” Terry agrees.

“Huh. Maybe I'll get Lotion to take me some time.”

“Oh, he doesn’t bowl, he just knows a guy. Milkman Man heard there was a portal to another dimension under the pin retrieval area of lane five, and he wanted to check it out.”

“Huh.” Tim still hasn’t worked out whether Casey and Terry are playing the world's most elaborate practical joke on him, or if they’re insane. The fact that Gar says they’ve told him a lot of the same things (he’s related to them somehow, in the distant nebulous way he seems to be related to everyone Tim meets in The Street) suggests insane, but the fact that they both hold down full-time jobs suggests practical joke. “I hope that goes well for him.”

“Oh I’m sure it will,” Terry says cheerfully. “Things usually do.”

There isn’t really anything he can say to that, so he just nods and takes a seat at the bar. The stools are straight out of a 50s themed diner, and the bar itself looks like part of a set from the Jetsons, avocado green with chrome trim.

“Hey Danny.”

“Boner to vada you again, Robin love,” Danny says. He calls all the Wayne kids except Cass ‘Robin’ and no one knows why, but it freaks the hell out of Dick, who's mom used to call him that when he was a kid. “What can I get you?”

“Black coffee, please.”

“Chocolate shake and a cheese sandwich coming up,” Danny says, and Tim doesn’t bother arguing. Danny’s shakes are good, and he is kinda hungry now that he thinks about it. “You shouldn't be drinking coffee, it stunts your growth.”

“I like being short.”

“C-O-F-F-E coffee’s much stronger than tea,” sings Terry. She works in advertising and has a jingle for everything.

“That's not how you spell it,” Cliffe’s voice says from somewhere in the depths of the shop, and Tim twists round to try and spot him.

He finds him in the furthest booth, half hidden behind behind a naked mannequin wearing a Toya Wilcox wig. “Hey Cliffe.”

“Hey yourself, Batboy. How’s high school?”

“Could be worse. How’s law school?”

Cliffe used to be a professional rally driver, but a nasty crash had left him with a plastic hip and pins in both legs, so he decided it was time to retrain.

“About as exciting as you’d expect. You start rehearsals?”

“Only line reads so far. Kyle’s started designing the sets, but until he’s done there’s not much for me to do yet.”

“What show are you doing?”

Tim sighs. “Romeo and Juliet.”

“You don’t sound thrilled.”

“Yeah. We’re still paying for the Medea incident. And Midsummer Night’s Dream. We can’t get approval for anything actually interesting. Not that there’s anything wrong with Romeo and Juliet, it’s fine, and it’s better than Henry VIII or the Cherry Orchard, but it would be nice to not be doing the same show as every other high school in the state, you know?”

“You could do something different with it?”

“My suggestion of an all Klingon production was sadly shot down.”

“chaH qoH.”

“vISov.” He’s not even surprised that Cliffe speaks Klingon. He gave up being surprised by the regulars of The Street long ago. “Chay'... I can’t actually remember how that goes. How’s Jane?”

“Pretty good. She’s got a gallery show next week that she’s excited about. Could be a big break for her.”

“Hey, that's great! Have you got the details? My foster dad would be interested, he likes to keep an eye on up and coming artists.” Nor strictly true - Bruce has a crush on one of Duela’s dads, and goes to all his events, and tries to cover it up by attending other people's gallery shows as well.

Cliffe ambles his way up to the counter and hands over a handful of flyers for the show. “In case you know any other eccentric millionaires who like to collect art.”

“I'll see what I can do.” Roy and Connor H’s dad isn't much of a collector but he can generally be persuaded to part with money for a good cause, and Tim has had some good returns on his investments lately and wouldn't mind putting something aside for a rainy day. He'd been considering diamonds, but art could appreciate more value if you picked the right artist. It remained to be seen if Crazy Jane was the right artist.

“Hey did Gar get a good role in the play? He didn't say.”

“He's the Friar. It's the last show for the seniors so they got all the big parts.”

“Guess he can't be the lead every time.”

“He'd have made a better Romeo than Don. I think Jason may actually stab him if his stage fighting doesn't improve.”

“Romeo bleeding out on stage on opening night would at least be different from every other school.”

“Tempting. Very tempting. It’s not that I dislike Don, he’s just…”

“Wet?”

“Yeah. So wet. He doesn’t even like picking up the prop swords, and it’s not like they’re sharp!”

“Not everyone takes knife-fighting lessons,” Danny points out. “Most people aren’t used to playing with swords.”

“It’s a glorified stick. It’s not like we’ve handed him a bastard sword.”

“Pacifist production,” Terry suggests. “Replace all the fights with dance-offs.”

Tim laughs. “At this point that would honestly be an improvement.”

“I will definitely come and see it if you do.”

“You mean you weren’t going to see it anyway? I’m hurt.”

“Of course we were coming to see it,” Casey says quickly. “We never miss one of Gar’s shows. Even Lotion is coming, and you know how he feels about 16th century dramatists.”

Tim has absolutely no idea how Lotion feels about 16th century dramatists, but he just nods. If he asks, they’ll tell him, and then he’ll have to know.

“Cheese sandwich, chocolate shake,” Danny says, setting them on the counter.

“Giant snake, Birthday cake,” Tim replies, automatically.

“Green moose, guava juice,” Terry adds.

Tim turns to look at her. “You used to watch Fairly Odd Parents?”

“Don’t think so? What is it?”

“Those were the words. To the theme song.”

“Oh, then no.”

“So why did you say that?”

“These were just the words that wanted to be there. You don’t get far in advertising without learning to recognize what shape a silence is. That one was green moose shaped.”

“Has it occurred to you that you probably shouldn’t exist?”

“Have you considered that I don’t?”

He had, actually. That’s why he so often brings someone else with him when he comes to the Street. It makes him feel better to have confirmation that other people can see and hear the regulars.

“Alternatively,” Cliffe says, a mischievous light in his eyes, “has it occurred to you that we should exist but not in this universe?”

Tim looks at Danny. “Is this place a pocket dimension? Or a dimensional rift?”

Danny grins and taps his nose. “That would be telling, Robin love, that would be telling.”

Tim takes a sip of his milkshake, and is reassured that even if the patrons don’t exist, the milkshake definitely does, and is very chocolatey. Sometimes it’s the little things in life.


	6. It's not like Ollie wouldn't be proud of any sex related medals his kids got

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no new characters this time, so no Dramatis Personae

Dick hears the wolf whistle as he's leaving school, and spins round to find Roy grinning at him unrepentantly.

“Hey sweet thing, you going my way?”

Dick raises an eyebrow. He's not as good at the expression as Bruce or Cass, but it usually has the desired effect. “Sweet thing?”

Roy shrugs. “It's an experiment.”

“It failed.”

“It's not for _you_.”

Dick sighs. Roy had decided that hooking up with Dick and Jay isn't enough - he's going for the Wayne family hat trick. “If you call Steph sweet thing she'll punch you.”

“What about Tim?”

“He'd stab you.”

“Getting warmer then.”

“You know if you want Tim to cut you you could always try asking him. He'd probably do it.”

“Yes,  but would he get off on it?”

“God knows. I try and keep out of little brother's sex life. But when Steph bought a copy of 50 Shades to see what the fuss was about, he and Jay ritually burned it in the back garden and Tim made a speech about how the misrepresentation of kink was the reason it didn't deserve to live.”

“Huh. What did Bruce do?”

“Well he stopped them from holding the execution inside the house.”

“I've said this before but I really feel I can't stress this enough. Your family is really weird, Dick.”

“As opposed to yours?”

“Ollie getting me high is definitely less weird than Bruce letting you execute a book for crimes against kink.”

“To be fair, it's less _letting_ and more recognizing that there's no point trying to fight Tim and Jay when they work together.”

Roy’s expression goes a little dreamy, and Dick sighs. Sometimes he really thinks he ought to get new friends. Ones who don’t fantasize about his foster-brothers in front of him. He kicks Roy in the ankle.

“Abuse,” Roy says, but he sounds pretty happy about it. “You abuse me Dick.”

“Only when you ask nicely,” Dick says absently. “Roy, are you actually serious about wanting to hook up with Tim and Steph, or are you just trying to piss me off?”

Roy’s expression sobers. “I was serious, but I can stop if it's really bothering you.”

“Nah, it's fine as long as they're fine with it. I’m not sure they’re really the casual type though, either of them.”

“Dickie…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. _Just because it’s not dating doesn’t mean it’s not serious_.”

"You could at least try and sound like you believe that.”

“No, I do. You know I do. I love you man, you know that.”

“I would die for you Dickie. I’d rather pull out my own teeth than date you, but it’s still making love not fucking, every time.”

God, for someone who avoids all relationships more serious than fuck-buddies like the plague, Roy can be such a sap. “And Jason?”

Roy sticks his hands in his pockets. “If I was told tomorrow I had to marry someone, I’d pick Jason.”

“So why aren’t you dating him?!”

“For the same reason I’m not dating Kori. Same reason I’m not looking to date any of your family. I mean not you, you’re a special case, I’m not dating you because you are to relationships what C4 is to bridges. But basically everyone else in my life. Right now I’m happy the way I am, and I’m not hurting anyone. I’m careful about that.”

“Yeah, I know you are. And I didn’t mean… I just don’t want them getting hurt. They’ve both had enough of that.”

Roy raises his hand, three figures extended. “I solemnly swear I will not break Steph or Timmy’s heart.”

Dick kicks him again. “You were kicked out of the Boy Scouts, remember?”

“True. Okay, how about this. I swear on Jason’s biceps and your ass that I will not break either Steph or Tim’s heart. Better?”

“And you won’t marry them.”

“Hey, I’m allowed to marry them if I want to. And they want to. But that’s irrelevant, because I don’t want to marry anyone and if I did it would be Jason and Kori.”

“You only get to marry one person, Roy.”

“Which is why I don’t want to marry anybody.”

“Does Jason know you’re doing this?”

Roy grins. “Jason advised me to buy some chainmail and get a rabies shot, but he gave me his blessing.”

Jason hates Tim about 40% of the time, but he adores Steph and would never do anything to harm her. Plus he knows Roy nearly as well as Dick does. If he thinks this is a good idea, Dick’s not going to be the one to say no. “Fine, whatever. You can see if ‘sweet thing’ works on Tim or Steph.”

Roy whoops his delight, and shoves his shoulder against Dick hard enough that he almost falls. “Hell yeah! Wayne family hat-trick here I come! Someone have better made a trophy for that.”

“I’m pretty sure Gar made one out of a solo cup and some tinfoil the first time you hooked up with Jason.”

“Awesome! Ollie will finally have something to put on the mantelpiece next to all Connor’s archery medals.”

“Any you say your family isn’t weird.”

“Your brothers _executed a book_ for getting kink wrong, you are in no position to judge.”

“And yet you still want to sleep with them.”

“Hell yeah I do. What, were you under the impression that I’m not a weirdo? Dickie, I’m best friends with _you_.”

Roy manages to dodge the kick this time, but he isn’t expecting the elbow to the ribs, or the full body tackle that follows it.


	7. Dinah is a very reluctant step-mom, but she'll still kill anyone who messes with Ollie's kids

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
> _Characters new to the story only_
> 
> Ollie - _Oliver Queen/Green Arrow. Arrow Family & JLA_  
> Dinah - _Dinah Lance/Black Canary. Arrow Family, JLA & Bird of Prey_

“Hey Roy?”

Roy looks up from his notation paper to find Connor, hovering in the doorway of Roy’s room and looking maybe the most nervous Roy has ever seen him since he first arrived at Ollie’s. 

“You okay, bro?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I just… I need some advice.”

“Don’t drink and smoke at the same time.”

“Not the advice I meant.”

“Okay, don’t believe Ollie when he tells you food is vegetarian.”

Connor snorts, and generally looks less like he’s preparing to face the inquisition, which Roy is going to count as a win. “He tried to tell me Sloppy Joes were vegetarian last week because they have carrots in them.”

“Yeah, he’s not getting the hang of that any time soon.”

“He’s trying harder than he used to. But that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Roy gestures Connor to sit on the bed, and spins around his desk chair to face him. Connor looks as good in Roy’s bed as he always does (Wally thinks it’s gross that Roy is attracted to his foster-brother, but the Waynes all agree that it’s fine since they didn’t meet until Connor was twelve and Roy fourteen and also, Connor is undeniably gorgeous) and Roy allows himself a moment to mourn the fact that Connor doesn’t want to fuck anyone, especially his big brother. Not that Roy has any problem with Connor being ace - as far as he’s concerned the people who have a problem with that are just as bad as the people who have a problem with Roy being pan or poly - but Connor is absurdly beautiful, and Roy’s allowed to dream.

“So what can I do for you, bro?”

“Roy, I… how do you know when you have a crush on someone?”

“You rethinking some things about your identity?”

“I’m definitely still ace. I don’t want to have sex. But I’m wondering if maybe I was wrong about being aro?”

“Okay, well, why do you think you have a crush on Kyle? It is Kyle, right?”

“Yes! How did you know? Oh god, have I been super obvious? Do you think he knows? If he knows, why hasn’t he said anything?!”

“To quote Jason, you, Connor Hawke, are a beautiful idiot. I knew it was Kyle because he’s your favorite person in the _universe_.”

Connor sighs. “Yeah he really is.”

“And you want to hold his hand and take him on dates and maybe smooch him.”

“I don't know about smooching. I don't want to, you know, give him the wrong idea. But the rest of it, definitely.”

“Man, I am so not the person to talk to about this. Look, we don't talk about it cos I don't want to make you uncomfortable but you've got to have noticed I'm fucking just about everyone I care about who isn't part of this family. I don't really do non sexual relationships.”

“I'm asking because you're my big brother,” Connor says, and that, that right there, is why Roy doesn't actually want to fuck Connor, however attracted he is. He’ll always be at least a little bit conflicted over Ollie, and his own adoption, but being Connor’s brother is the best thing that ever happened to him.

“I love you, bro. I don't tell you often enough, but I really do. And I'm going to give Uncle Bane your phone number because he knows way more about this than me.”

“I love you too, Roy. Why do you call him Uncle Bane?”

“Because Ragdoll gets jealous if I call him Daddy.”

“But you're not…”

“I would totally sleep with Bane if he offered, except if he offered then he wouldn't be the good man I am attracted to so I wouldn't want to. The older man paradox. We chat sometimes. It's cool to have someone more experienced who can answer questions about being poly and kink and stuff. And he's ace, and he's dating Doll who's also ace, and they're both dating Thomas who totally isn't ace, so they can give you both perspectives.”

“That's great, thank you.”

“But?”

“But… I still want to know what you think.”

“I'm not the expert on this shit, bro.”

“No, but you're my brother, and you know me and you know Kyle. And you're good at this stuff. I gave up counting your friends with benefits when you were a _Sophomore_ , but there's never any drama. You don't hurt anyone you sleep with.”

“Only if they ask nicely.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Yeah I do.” And he has no idea what he's supposed to say. He knows he's a pretty good big brother,  even if Connor never wants Roy to do any traditional big brother stuff like buying him booze or introducing him to cute guys or girls, but it's something else entirely to hear Connor say so earnestly that he _admires_ Roy. That he doesn't think Roy’s a fuck up, even though basically all Roy’s achievements in life to date have been sex related. Even though Roy spends half his life high, and he'd given up serious archery competitions in favour of target shooting and getting pissed with his friends. “You  always see the best in people.”

“It's easy when it's you.”

Okay, Roy absolutely has to hug the shit out of baby brother right the fuck now. Connor makes an oof of surprise when Roy lands on him, but he doesn't try to fight and he hugs back almost immediately. “I can't believe you used to hate me.”

“I didn't hate you, I was _scared_ of you. Anyway you hated me first.”

Roy laughs and squeezes him tighter. “I was scared of you too. I was so sure you were going to replace me and I'd end up in the system.”

“I thought dad would never love me when he'd already got a son who was so much like him.”

“I'm not his son.”

“You are, you know. Just because you both refuse to admit it that doesn't make it not true. He loved you before he knew I even existed! Tell me what to do about Kyle.”

“Ask him out, you beautiful idiot. He’ll say yes, because you're his favorite person in the universe too, and then you'll get married and have beautiful babies together and look like a stock photo of the perfect family.”

“A gay interracial perfect family?”

“A _beautiful_ gay interracial perfect family. Come on, try and tell me you don’t want that.”

“I would like to be a dad one day. And Kyle is beautiful. And really patient and gentle, he’d be a good dad. And okay, yes, I totally want to marry him and have a family with him one day.”

Roy ruffled Connor’s hair and grinned at how he still looked beautiful, even ruffled and grumpy and lovelorn. “So ask him out.”

“How? What if he wants to have sex?”

“Just ask him. It really is that easy. And ask him what he wants. And tell him what you want. And just… keep doing that. Forever.”

“Is that what you do?”

“I mean what I want usually involves a lot more nudity and spanking than you’re probably into, but basically. The only way to keep from hurting each other is to make sure you’re both on the same page about everything, and the only way to do that is to talk about it, and the only way to do _that_ is to start by telling him you love him and want to have his babies.”

“And what if he wants stuff I can’t give him?”

“Then you agree no harm no foul, you move on, and you stay friends. It hurts for a bit, but not forever.”

Connor blinks up at him, eyes startlingly blue in his dark face. “You’ve had your heart broken?”

“Of course I have. Just cos I don’t date doesn’t mean I don’t love.” He can see Connor wants to know more, but he’s enjoying the moment too much to want to ruin it by going over old wounds. “Honestly, Kyle doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to demand sex, and if it turns out I’m wrong, Dinah’ll castrate him for you.”

Connor laughs. “She totally would too. Thanks, Roy. I told you you were good at this stuff.”

Roy is never ever going to say the words ‘aw shucks’ unless there’s a gun to his head, so he settles for giving his baby bro the kind of full-body hug that Dick would approve of.


	8. To a civilian, the Waynes totally look like some kind of paramilitary cult

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
> Duke - _Duke Thomas/Signal. Batfamily. Freshman_  
>  Alfred - _Alfred Pennyworth. Batfamily_  
>  Dami - _Damian Wayne/the fifth Robin. Batfamily_  
>  the dog - _Titus_

Duke hitches his bag higher on his back and takes a deep breath. So far Bruce seems nice, and the fact that he’d fostered a load of other kids and ended up adopting most of them suggests he’s a decent guy, but there’s a big difference between meeting Bruce in the impersonal dining room of the group home with a social worker supervising, and actually moving in with the guy.

The fostering thing isn't bothering Duke the way it does some of the other kids. The way he sees it, it’s no different than the home except there'll be less competition for the bathrooms. Bruce isn’t replacing his parents any more than the social workers were.

What _is_ bothering him is the thought of the other kids. Bruce has six, three adopted, two fostered and one biological. Presumably they’re used to Bruce taking in new kids, since there are so many of them, but how can he know? They might all hate him on principle, just for being the new kid. (And that isn’t even taking into account all the risks that came from being a black kid in a white family. He could be walking right into a blacksploitation horror movie for all he knows).

But none of it is going to get any easier if he puts it off. He takes another deep breath, and raised a hand to knock.

The door swings inwards, just as Duke’s knuckles are about to make contact, and on instinct he follows it, only just stopping himself in time to keep from falling flat on his face.

He looks up, ears flushed with embarrassment, to find the person who had opened the door isn’t Bruce or any of his kids, but an elderly white man with thinning hair and a pencil mustache, dressed in vest and tie, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbow.

“You must be Mister Thomas,” he says, and he has the kind of cut-glass British accent Duke has only ever heard on tv before. “I am Alfred Pennyworth. Mister Wayne is expecting you.”

He stands back and gestures into the house, and Duke obediently follows him into the entrance hall, which is bigger than any bedroom Duke has ever had, with a wide sweeping staircase off to one side and a multi-armed chandelier thing hanging from the ceiling.

“May I take your bag, Mister Thomas?”

Duke tightens his grip on the straps of his backpack. “No, it’s fine. I can hold on to it. And you don’t have to call me Mr Thomas. My name’s Duke.”

“Very well, Master Duke. Master Bruce is awaiting you in the study, if you would like to follow me.”

“So are you the butler or something?” he asks as he followed Mr Pennyworth.

“I had to honour to be Butler to Master Bruce’s late parents, as was my father before me. Since their passing, Master Bruce has not kept a large enough staff to warrant a Butler. I am whatever Master Bruce requires of me - Valet, Housekeeper, Nanny. Chief cook and bottlewasher, as my mother used to say.”

“But you’re, like, a servant?” No way is he going to fit in here, not with a load of white kids who are used to having _servants_.

Mr Pennyworth doesn’t turn around, but Duke can feel the disapproval radiating off him. “It is fashionable among young people to look down on those in domestic service, but it is an old and noble profession. I have known Master Bruce since he was a baby, and it is my pleasure to serve him and his family.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“I understand, Master Duke. This is all new to you. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll fit right in.” He knocks softly on a nearby door.

“Yes, Alfred?”

“Master Duke has arrived, Sir.”

“Oh, well send him straight in. And bring some coffee, would you?”

“Right away, sir.”

Duke shifts his grip on his bag and tries to look less like a man going to an execution. He jumps out of his skin when he feels a gentle touch on his arm. “You’ll be fine,” Alfred Pennyworth says in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Try not to worry.”

Duke nods his thanks, and pushes open the door. The room on the other side isn’t as stuffy and posh as he was expecting. There’s a big old wooden desk, and a lot of the books that line the walls look old and valuable, but there’s plenty of modern paperbacks as well, and Bruce himself is sitting in a low armchair by the fire, not behind the desk like Duke had been expecting.

He rises as Duke enters, and he's not smiling but his eyes are warm. “It is good to see you Duke. I hope you'll be happy here for as long as you want to stay.”

“Thank you. It’s good of you to have me.”

“Oh, it’s my pleasure. Is Ms Peters not with you?”

“I, ah, I kinda asked her to come back later. I wanted to do this bit on my own, you know?”

Bruce nods. “I understand. How was your journey?”

Okay, boring small talk. Duke can totally do boring small talk. “It was fine. We....”

He trails off at the sound of an ear splitting scream from upstairs. Bruce frowns at nothing in particular. “Excuse me.” He goes to the door, leans out into the corridor and yells, “Damian Tariq Wayne, come here right now.”

He stands back, hands clasped behind his back, and a moment later a scowling kid of ten or eleven appears. He’s carrying a wooden sword and being followed by a large dog and a grinning girl of about Duke's age.

“Stephanie…” the kid begins, but Bruce ignores him.

“He ambushed you again?”

“He was in the wardrobe this time,” the girl agrees. “He hit me in the arm.”

Bruce sighes. “Stephanie,  would you mind giving Duke the tour while I talk to Damian about why I'm cancelling his kendo lessons.”

Damian starts yelling immediately, and Stephanie wisely doesn’t try and talk over him, just nodding to Bruce and pulling Duke out of the room. The huge dog watches them go with a look of longing, like it’s as desperate to be out of there as Duke is.

As they round the corner he hears Damian say “And I wasn't even consulted about you taking in another stray!”

“Don't mind Dami,” Stephanie says. “He's more bark than bite. He thinks being Bruce’s bio son makes him special, but he an okay kid underneath it all.”

“It sounded like he hit you pretty hard.”

Steph shrugs. “It'll probably bruise, but it wasn’t that bad. I only screamed so Bruce would hear. The boys know they're not allowed in my room. Except Tim, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Duke agrees. He has no idea who Tim is.

“Ah, sorry dude. Spooky has been talking about you all week, I forgot you hadn't actually met us yet. I'm Steph. Spooky’s been fostering me for year. You've met Damian and Alfred already. I think the others are in the gym.” She sees his face and grins. “Yeah, Bruce is the kind of crazy rich person who has a private gym. Try not to think about it too much, it'll only freak you out.”

She leads the way to the gym, keeping up gentle chatter about the house and their school and the kind of food Alfred liked to cook.

“Okay, don't freak out,” she says suddenly, stopping in front of a pair of double doors, “but this totally used to be the ballroom.”

The room is stupidly big. There's machines in one corner, and racks and racks of free weights, but most of the room is taken up by mats and a boxing ring.

There's an Asian girl and a skinny little guy with a pointy face in the ring, apparently doing their best to kick each other's teeth in.

Two more guys are leaning on the ropes watching. They're all in workout gear, and all crazy shredded.

The two leaning on the ropes turn at the sound of the door opening.

“I've got three to one on Tim lasting five minutes,” the bigger guy says, grinning. “Care for a flutter?”

“What do I win?” Steph asks.

“Roy.”

“I'm good then. I don't want your leftovers thanks.”

“He’ll be heartbroken. You know he’s going for the matched set. Hey new guy, I'm Jason. Call me Jay.”

“Duke.” He holds out out a hand but it’s taken by the other guy. He’s shorter that Jason by a couple of inches, but he looks like he might be older. His skin is tanned and when he grins Duke almost takes a step backwards from the sheer force of his beauty. It’s like walking into a Calvin Klein commercial.

“I'm Dick. Yes, Dick, never Richard, Rick or anything else. Nice to finally meet you. The bossman’s been talking about you all week. Tim and Cass will come say hi as soon as Cass is done kicking Tim's ass.”

“Maybe Tim will kick her ass?” Duke suggests. It doesn’t seem very likely, since everyone else seems sure Tim will lose, but he’s not going to turn down the chance to ingratiate himself with one of his new foster-siblings.

“Give me a knife and maybe,” Tim says, ducking under a punch. “I’m not kidding myself here.”

“Getting better,” Cass says, kicking Tim hard enough to send him crashing back against the ropes. “But still distracted.”

“Wait, did you say a knife?” What the fuck has Duke walked into here? Is this some kind of White Nationalist paramilitary thing?

“Don’t tell Bruce,” Tim says, between pants.

“You know he knows, little brother. He’s Bruce. He always knows.”

“”Obviously. But as long as none of you snitch he can maintain plausible deniability.”

Duke was right, he was fucking right, he’s in a horror movie just like he feared. “This is a hell of a set up for, you know, civilians.” Oh great job Thomas, now they know you’re onto them.

Dick shrugs. “We’re a weird family. Bruce was a reserve for the Olympic fencing team, and has a black belt or above in like five martial arts. I was a professional aerialist in the circus, and I go kinda crazy if I’m not getting enough exercise so he started training me. Jay was getting into fights at school and loosing, so Bruce trained him to. Tim’s Tim.”

“He arrived with three knives in his bag and tried to stab Bruce on his first night here,” Jason puts in.

 "Yeah, that. Cass started training when she was like two, she’s the only one who can beat Bruce. Damian’s the same, but he’s only eleven so he can’t kick anyone’s ass yet except Steph’s.”

Steph shrugs. “Give me time. I’ve only been learning karate for like six months.”

“So do I have to start leaning to kick people in the face now?” Duke really doesn’t like violence, he’s not the violent type.

“Do you want to?”

“Not really? I mean, I guess if it was just karate lessons or something? I don’t want to learn knife fighting.”

“Don’t worry, that’s just a Tim thing. Kendo, arnis, bojutso and tai chi are options though. Fencing is not an option, fencing is compulsory. Also if you say you want to learn HEMA, Jay will probably kill you in your sleep, so I’d avoid that.”

“Are you all going to look at me weird if I tell you I don’t really want to learn to use any weapons? Also I don’t know what half the words you just said mean.”

“Not necessarily. What exercise _do_ you like?”

“I used to go along to my mom’s pilates class sometimes? It was supposed to help her bad back. And I did boxing for like, a semester, because it was free through this youth engagement programme. Oh, and I like freerunning.”

“I’ll beat up anyone who messes with you at school if you teach me pakour,” Tim calls from the ring.

“You’d do that anyway,” Cass says, and brings her elbow down onto his back hard enough to drive him to his knees. “Yield.”

“I yield, I yield. Fuck, I’m going to be feeling that for a _month_. Why do you always have to be so mean?”

“You like it.”

“Not from my sister!”

“We totally will though,” Jason says, dragging Duke’s attention away from the ring. “You’re one of us now, for as long as you want, and we protect our own. No one messes with a Wayne unless they’re prepared to take on all of us.”

That’s mostly  terrifying, but he’s pretty sure Jason actually meant it to be reassuring, which if anything makes it more terrifying. “Wow, okay. Strong sales pitch. Just to be clear though, you’re not some kind of paramilitary organisation, and you’re not going to go all… third act of Get Out on me, right?”

Steph bursts out laughing. “See? I fucking told you guys. New kid gets it. I told you the Wayne’s are creepy as fuck!”

“Laugh it up, little sister. You’re one of us now.”

“That’s just what I want you to think. It’s all part of my cunning ruse.” She turned to Duke. “I know they seem like a lot, but trust me. You want these guys in your corner. _No one_ fucks with the Waynes.”


	9. Steph thinks she's the sane one in this family - no one tell her there is no sane one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few people have been asking me for the backstories of the kids in this universe, so have a big ole' exposition dump.
> 
> Mr Nelson is Kent Nelson aka Dr Fate, and he's the social worker in charge of allowing actual crazy person Bruce Wayne to adopt kids in this universe. It was totally destiny that they all found one another, so I though I'd let Fate have a hand in it all.
> 
> No dramatis personae this time since there didn't seem much point introducing everyone's parents since they're mainly out of the picture at this point. They're all canonical, so you can find out more by looking up the Batkids if you're interested

“Okay,” Duke says, as soon as he’s alone with Steph. “You seem basically sane and normal, and I don’t want to pry into anything that isn’t my business, but…” He leaves the end of the sentence hanging, hoping that Steph will be able to pick up what he's putting down without him needing to actually say it.

She gets it straight away. “But you’re worried the Waynes are going to kill you in your sleep and you want to know what their deal is?”

“Yes. That.”

Steph shrugs. “They don’t really have a collective deal, except that Bruce is a crazy person and they’re all way too willing to along with his bullshit. But I guess they all have pretty major individual deals, if you know what I mean.”

Duke nods.

“Okay, so Dick grew up in the circus. Yes really. I legit didn't know that was a thing that still happened until I met him. He and his parents were trapeze artists, their gimmick was that they performed as a family. Then one night there was an accident, a rope snapped, and they both died in the middle of a performance, right in front of Dick.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. He’s pretty well adjusted considering. I mean he’s insane, everyone in this family is insane, but his crazy mostly isn’t trauma related.

“Jason’s dad was a dick who walked out when Jay was like four, and his mom was an addict. Never tell Jay I said this, because he fucking worships her, but she kinda messed him up. She OD’d when he was like eleven, and he lived on the streets for a couple of years before he met Bruce. He was never, like, official fostered. Bruce caught him jacking the tires from his car, and just decided he was going to adopt him.”

“I’m getting why you think he’s crazy.”

“Yeah. Jay’s got some pretty major anger management issues, but he mostly only takes them out on assholes and Tim, and Tim can look after himself.”

"What’s his deal?” They’d all kind of wigged Duke out, except Steph, but Tim was definitely the creepiest.

“His parents were assholes who used to do shit like go on holiday and leave Tim at home with an au-pair to watch him. They were the kind of rich were no one ever calls CPS, but if they’d been poor he’d have been taken into care for sure.

“Then one day they go away on holiday, and they disappear. They stop sending money to the au-pair, their phones don’t pick up, nothing. Tim figured something real bad had happened, but his mom had fucked him up so bad that he didn’t report them missing because he thought she’d be mad if she came back and found out he’d been taken into care. So he pretended they were still alive. For nine months.”

“How?!”

“He wrote the au-pair a letter claiming to be from his mom saying that they would be coming home soon and didn’t need her anymore. Then he forged his dad’s signature to get access to his college fund, which worked fine for like two months, but then the bank figured something weird was going on and froze the account.

“The power got cut off first, and then the water, plus he couldn’t buy any food. After the money ran out he lived by himself in the dark for six months before he got a virus that turned into pneumonia. He didn’t want to go to hospital, because he thought they’d figure out what he was doing, so he just ignored it and kept going to school, right up until he passed out in class and the nurse sent him to the ER.

“Once it all got out they launched a search for his parents and found out they’d been killed but because all their stuff was stolen and no-one in the US was looking for them, nobody figured out it was them until Tim got sick.

“They tried putting him in foster homes, but his mom had had this whole Ayn Rand ‘trust no one and never ask for help’ bullshit philosophy, plus all the isolation and fear and shit had really messed him up, and he kept attacking his foster parents.”

“Except Bruce.”

“Oh, he attacked Bruce as well to begin with, according to Dick and Jay. But Bruce is a crazy person so he kept giving Tim second chances until Tim finally agreed to cooperate with a therapist.”

“And the knives?”

“His base levels of paranoia were already pretty high, and nine months of isolation did _not_ help. His parents were assholes, but at least his mom spoke to him occasionally. Without them… He insists he had friends at his old school, but I've met them and they didn't know shit about him. They didn't even know he's queer.”

“Well not everyone wants to come out…”

“Except this is Tim. He was born ready to come out. Queerness and paranoia are the foundation stones of his whole self image.” She blushes when Duke stares at her. “Therapy speak. Bruce makes us all go.”

“Will he make me go?”

“Probably. It's not so bad really. I mean Tim now sleeps more than two hours a night, and Jason hasn't had detention for fighting in weeks.”

“But Tim still carries a knife.”

“Jason does too sometimes, because of being on the streets.

“Tim decided when he was like ten that since he was always gonna be tiny and queer, he'd better learn to defend himself. And being Tim he wasn't going to carry a weapon he didn't know how to use so he kind of taught himself to use a knife. And then when he came to live here, Bruce got him weapons lessons, because Bruce is a crazy person, and Tim realized that asking someone to teach you shit was a thing you’re actually allowed to do without it being a sign of weakness. But this is Tim, and he has to make everything weird, so instead of just focusing on his bojutsu, he ran away from a martial arts summer camp thing Bruce sent him to and spent two weeks learning knife fighting instead.”

How the fuck do you even find someone to teach you knife fighting, Duke wondered. “So has he ever actually, you know, stabbed someone?”

“I haven't asked. Maybe. He hangs out with this woman Pru, who's a mob enforcer or something, and she's totally intimidated by him.”

“Jesus.” Their insistence that they were all willing to throw down for him had been creepy, but he’s starting to see why they might think that was a normal way to welcome someone to the family. “Okay, I'm braced. Tell me Cass’s deal.”

“Her dad was like… the martial arts version of an abusive stage school mom. He'd been like the fourth best in the world at judo when he was younger and then he was big in MMA when that was first a thing, and he was obsessed with Cass doing better than him. He home schooled her and basically didn't teach her anything except martial arts. He was pretty violent as well but he'd pretend it was a fucked up kind of training.

“When Cass first arrived here she was mute. Elective mutism they call it, where your vocal chords do work but you can't speak because of stress or trauma or whatever.”

“She talks now.”

“Yeah she's still pretty quiet, and a lot of the time she signs rather than speaking, especially with Bruce, but she talks to family and Harper now.”

“What about at school?”

“She doesn't really talk to the teachers but Bruce got her all these disability permits and stuff so they can't make her. Mostly she signs, and writes notes. It works.”

It's pretty terrifying to be sharing a house with people who could probably kill him without breaking a sweat, but he's feeling a lot better about the whole thing realizing how committed to helping his kids heal Bruce is. He might be a crazy person, but he's a well-meaning crazy person, and that counts for a lot in Duke’s book. “Okay, last one. Damian seems like a real piece of work.”

“Yeah, he's hard work. He's a good kid though, underneath. He's okay with me, and he fucking adores Dick. It's mostly Tim he hates. I think it's because Tim was the next youngest before you.”

“So is he just spoiled?”

“Rotten. But he also had a really fucked up childhood.” She gives him a nervous glance. “Look, if I tell you something will you swear not to tell anyone outside the family?”

“Sure.”

“I mean it. You have have to swear.” Her expression is really intense, like this is something fucking life or death, and given what he’s been learning about this family, maybe it is.

"Alright, I swear.”

“Damian’s mom is Interpol’s fourth most wanted person in the world.”

“Seriously?!”

“They call her a terrorist, but her organisation assassinates important people instead of planting bombs or whatever. They're trying to stop global warming from cooking the planet by killing politicians and CEOs who doesn't support the environment. And, like, she's got a point, but she's also killed a _lot_ of people and she wants Damian to take over from her when she dies. So yeah, he's had had a really messed up childhood. Like, worse than any of the rest of us. He does pretty well considering.”

"Does he go to therapy?”

“Not yet. Bruce is still working on getting him to agree.” She grins at him suddenly, eyes bright with interest. “So what about you? What's your tragic backstory?”

Duke shrugs. “My parents were on that train that blew up last year. I've been in the system ever since.”

“And you've never tried to kill anyone, or bitten a therapist, or committed bank fraud?”

“Should I have?”

“Just trying to figure out why Mr Nelson sent you here instead of to sane foster parents.”

“Well what did you do?”

“Beat my asshole dad with a baseball bat, and kicked my mom's dealer's teeth in,” Steph says with a shrug, like it’s no big deal.

“Wow. Okay.”

“You'd totally been thinking I was the normal one, hadn't you?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

“The scary thing is, I _am_ the normal one. But the standards of this family I'm practically _boring_. So I'm gonna ask again. Why are you here?”

Duke thinks guiltily of the bolt cutters buried at the bottom of his bag and the size of his police file. “No idea. Maybe he thought I'd be calming influence on all of you?”


	10. Stage-fighting is all fun and games until someone gets stabbed with a prop-sword

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
> Principle Waller - _Amanda Waller. Suicide Squad_  
>  Garth - _Garth/Tempest, formerly the first Aqualad. Aqua Family & Titan. Senior_  
> Lucius - _Lucius Reynolds/The Great Ludini. Brotherhood of Dada. Freshman_

“Thou wretched boy!” Jason yells - not his best delivery, but they're only blocking - and thrusts with his wooden prop sword, keeping it slow to give Don time to parry.

Don takes two stumbling steps backward, trips over his own feet and ends up flat on his back with his prop sword still in his belt.

Jason raises his hand. “Permission to drown Romeo in the pool, sir?”

“Probably best not,” Basil says, regretfully.

“Permission to give him fencing lessons after school?”

“What do you know about fencing?”

“My foster-dad was like sixth best in the country when he was younger, he made us all learn.”

Basil had met Bruce Wayne for the first time during Dick’s first year, when Dick had let Roy Harper talk him into taking mushrooms during the first act interval of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bruce had at least been more upset about the whole thing that Roy’s dad, but not by much. In the end they’d persuaded Principle Waller not to expel the boys, but they’d only been allowed to stay on at the school on the proviso that they were banned from theatre club for life. (Which was a damn shame, because Dick’s performance as Puck that night had been one of the best Basil has ever seen). “At this point I'm not even surprised anymore. Permission granted, providing you promise not to stab our lead.”

“I don't think I can make that promise,” Jason says, to general laughter from the onlookers. “Maybe if I show him how it's done he’ll remember for next time.”

That seems highly unlikely, but some entertainment was definitely called for after the boredom of blocking. “You're welcome to try, Mr Todd.”

“Alright. Tim, what do you say?”

“I say thou art a wretched poxy whore-son knave, “ Tim says, vaulting onto the stage and picking up Don’s sword.

The foster brothers alternate between being thick as thieves and hating one another's guts. Evidently today is a hating one another's guts day. Jason is very sensitive to any insult involving his mother.

“Mayhap so I be,” Jason says, stepping into a fencer’s ready position, “But at least my mother loved me.”

There’s a chorus of ‘ooooh’s from the audience, and someone (probably Miguel from the sound of it) shouts “sick burn bro”.

Tim narrows his eyes and steps into a guard position. “I’ll gut you where you stand, Capulet.”

“I’d like to see you try, Montague.”

Basil doesn’t say anything - they might not be quoting the play, but it’s certainly in the spirit of the original, and maybe a bit of play-fighting will help them burn off some of the aggressive tension.

He should have known better.

The swords are at least blunt, being made of wood, but they're still just big sticks and the brothers seem determined to hurt one another.

Tim is faster, but Jason has strength and reach on his side, and they look to be pretty evenly matched. Basil has done enough stage fighting in his life to recognise that Jason’s using a pretty traditional fencing style, his body upright and his free hand held out of the way. Tim keeps low, tossing the sword from hand to hand as Jason gives him openings. Basil’s pretty sure he'd be disqualified instantly from a real fencing match, but Jason is too intent on injuring his brother to care.

He should break it up, but he's a little concerned that if he intervenes they'll gang up on him. He's not generally afraid of his students, but he is aware that some of these kids would never have been accepted into any other school, and according to staff room gossip, the Wayne kids wouldn't have been accepted by any other foster family either.

Jason leans back out of the reach of a slash of Tim's sword, and thrusts hard and true to Tim's shoulder. “First blood to me, brother.”

He starts to turn around but Tim straightens up, hefting his sword in his hand, and calls out, “Tybalt, you rat catcher, will you walk?”

Never before has ‘rat catcher’ been imbued with such hatred.

“What would thou have of me?” Jason demands, turning back, his body language filled with the banked violence that makes him such a perfect Tybalt.

“Why good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives,” Tim replies, and Basil knows he's not going to stop them, not when this is exactly what he loves about the theatre. Tim's Mercutio is so different from Duela’s as to be unrecognisable and yet both are there in the text waiting to be found, Duela’s manic grins and constant movement, and Tim's acid tongue and watchful stillness, and he wants to see how the brothers will play out the scene, how different it will be with these performers and their history. “Will you pluck your sword out of his pitcher by the ears? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears ‘ere it be out.”

Jason actually growls, which should be ridiculous and is actually just intimidating. “I am for you!”

Despite their perfect recall of the lines, there’s nothing about the fight that follows that could be mistaken for stage fighting.

Jason uses his strength and size, forcing Tim back and back until he’s nearly at the edge of the stage, a step away from falling. When Jason brings his prop sword down in a great overhand blow aimed for Tim’s head, all Tim can do was bring his own sword up to block it.

With a snap like the cracking of bone, Tim's sword snaps, splinters flying and distracting Jason just enough for Tim to dive aside, back towards upstage left.

He rolled fluidly to his feet, his expression terrifyingly blank, and when Jason comes for him again he’s ready, pivoting his weight and kicking up and out.

It’s enough to shake Basil out of his stupor as the horror of what’s happening finally sinks in, but it’s Don who moves first, his wild yell of “Hold, Tybalt” echoing through the room.

The fighters freeze, Tim balanced precariously on one leg, his foot a milimetre from Jason’s nose, Jason’s sword a second away from thrusting hard enough into Tim's stomach to cause internal bleeding.

Don inserts himself between them, eyes wide with fear, forcing them to drop back into ready positions. He turns to Tim, expression pleading. “Good Mercutio.”

It's Duela who breaks the tension, before Jason can take the cue to attack his brother again.

She leaps onto the stage, snatching up the broken sword blade and shoving it under her arm. “I am hurt!” she exclaims dramatically. “A plague on both your houses, I am sped!”

“What, art thou hurt?” Garth asks, not bothering to get out of his seat.

“Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch,” Duela says, limping towards the tableau of fighters. “Marry, 'tis enough.” She collapses onto Don, obviously expecting him to catch her. Don, who is a good foot shorter than Duela and about 100 pounds sopping wet, goes down with an undignified squawk, Duela with him.

From their heap on the floor, Duela waves the broken sword blade and says in her most commanding voice, “Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.”

“Get your own surgeon,” Lucius shouts from the audience. “I’m on my break.”

“A plague!” Duela shouts. Don manages to get himself nearly upright before she grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him back down to bellow, “A plague on employee unions!” right into his face.

The whole cast collapse in giggles, even Tim cracking a smile.

Kori joins the group on the stage, wrapping an arm around Jason’s shoulders and saying something that Basil doesn’t catch that makes him sag in her grip, all the fight going out of him.

Donna calls Tim to the edge of the stage, ostensibly to ask him something about performance, which has the intended effect of getting Tim safely away from his brother so he can cool off. Tim bears grudges like no one Basil has ever taught when he feels someone has wronged him or his family, but he’s also a lot more likely to forgive and forget than his mercurial brother.

Basil always misses the theatre kids who graduate each year, but he knows he’s going to miss this year’s seniors more than usual. Moments like this are why he’ll always defend his kids from any malicious staff room gossip, and why he’ll always believe theatre studies are vital to a well rounded education. Kori has a file as thick as his arm, Duela had been kicked out of two schools before this one, Don is treated as a joke by most of the teachers and students for his timid nature, even high-flying Donna is considered too bossy, but they’re all such good kids, and he’s so proud of all of them.

His melancholy train of thought is interrupted by Don saying mournfully, “I can’t believe Mr Karlo is going to make me learn to kill people,” and this time even Basil joins in the laughter.


	11. Topless Riddler, coming soon to an art gallery near you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Truths about every version of Bruce I write - he was in love with Harvey Dent when they were teenagers, he went to school with Lex Luthor, and he's at least 5% attracted to the Joker even when he doesn't want to be and that percentage increases the closer to moral Joker gets and decreases the closer to normal Joker gets.
> 
> Duela Dent has had more origin stories than just about any other DC character, but my personal favourite is the one where she's the kid of good-guy versions of Joker, Riddler and a gender-swapped Two-Face (hilariously called Three Face) from Earth 3. The comic couldn't make up it's mind if it was a poly relationship or a love triangle, but I am me and love triangles are the worst, so they're all dating.
> 
> This chapter touches on mental health issues and parenting in ways some people might find uncomfortable. We're not going dark with this series, but I can't write Joker as mentally healthy, I just can't.
> 
> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
> Eve - _Evelyn Dent/Three-Face (alternate universe Harvey Dent/Two-Face)_  
>  Jack - _Jokester (alternate universe Joker). I've gone with Jack Napier as the name here, mainly because it's a nice name, but he doesn't actually have a canon name._  
>  Eddie - _Edward Nygma/Riddler_  
>  Lex - _Lex Luthor. Superman villain_  
>  Mercy - _Mercy Graves. Superman villain_

Bruce juggles his parcels - flowers for Eve, chocolates for Eddie, and a bottle of something more closely related to paint thinner than wine for Jack - until he can get a hand free to ring the doorbell.

It’s Eve who answers. She's wearing a purple dress that makes her eyes sparkle, and the diamond necklace Bruce had given her for her 40th, looking both like and totally unlike the first girl Bruce had ever fallen in love with.

He kisses the air above her cheek, careful not to smudge her makeup, and hands over the flowers.

The bouquet had been arranged by Alfred, but Bruce had chosen the flowers. Delicate blooms of Rosa Mundi, the last of the summer, with their two-tone petals. Eve’s favourite.

She brings the bouquet to her face and inhales the sweet scent, and then favours him with a bright smile, made crooked by the acid scars that no amount of plastic surgery will ever fully repair.

“Eddie’s cooking,” she says, as she stands aside to let him in. “But Jack insisted on making desert since you were coming and you, I quote, ‘appreciate his creative genius’. God only knows what we'll be having. You shouldn't encourage him you know.”

The man himself has come to see who’s at the door, and hears her. “Nonsense Evie, without constant encouragement my artistic spirit would shrivel up and die.”

Jack, with his usual disregard for convention (that artistic spirit he's always talking about) is wearing an emerald green shirt with “two timing son of a bitch” written on it, trousers in a hideous orange and purple check, and six inch stilettos that add to his already considerable height.

Bruce holds out the bottle of paint stripper to him and gets a grin in return.

“Something nice, darling?”

“Horrendous,” Bruce tells him. “Tastes like turpentine and will get you paralytic in about half a glass.”

“You know me so well. Come up to the studio, I want to show you my new piece before dinner.” Her glances at Eve. “You don't mind do you dear? You've already seen it, and Lex has no appreciation for art.”

“You win a prize if you can keep him distracted and out of the kitchen until dinner time, Bruce.”

“I’ll do my best, but I make no promises.”

“He knows better than that, don’t you darling? Come on, I promise you’ll like it, and you’ll get to show off to Lex that you got to see my new piece before it was unveiled.”

“Are you and Lex speaking again now?” Bruce asks, as he follows Jack up to this studio on the top floor.

“Nope,” Jack says, pronouncing the p as a kind of pop. “It's going to be horrifically awkward.” He sounds thrilled.

Lex doesn't like anyone much, but he has a certain nostalgic fondness for Bruce, respects Eve, and at least tolerates Eddie. Jack he despises, and Jack has made it abundantly clear that the feeling is returned.

If Lex is coming tonight it means he's at least prepared to try burying the hatchet. Whether Jack plays along really depends on where he is on his wide spectrum of moods.

Jack had given up seeing psychiatrists by the time Bruce met him when the were eighteen, but Bruce knew they’d been an unavoidable feature of his childhood. He ranges from violently destructive to childishly whimsical, with no apparent pattern or triggers. Eve told him once, in a rare moment of vulnerability, that she and Eddie had go bags and safewords set up, just in case Jack ever went too far. Just in case they needed to get Duela out of there in a hurry. Bruce couldn’t imagine living like that, but he couldn’t deny that he’d at least consider it if Jack wanted that from him.

In the first seventeen years of his life, Bruce had never experienced anything like attraction. He watched his classmates fall in love with girls, with teachers, with their cousins, with each other. Even Lex always had a girl in tow, although Bruce was never sure that he actually liked any of them.

He never felt anything like that. He’d started to think that he wasn’t capable of feeling anything of the kind, and then he met Eve and Jack within weeks of one another and everything he knew about himself turned upside-down.

He’d met Eve at the library. Alfred had insisted that if all he was going to do was sit around and read he could at least leave the house for it. Angry and bitter, Bruce had marched right up to the girl reading the one copy of the book he wanted and demanded she give it to him.

She’d laughed in his face, insulted his lineage, manners, appearance, and intelligence, and Bruce had thought “oh, so this is desire.”

Things had got a little more complicated eight weeks later when he met Jack. Or more precisely when Jack, during one of his periodic bouts of voluntary homelessness, had tried to mug Bruce. Bruce had revealed that all he had in his pockets was a copy of Republic he was on his way to return to the library, and by the time Jack had finished his rant about why Plato was an insufferable prick, Bruce had learned a few more truths about himself.

He wishes desperately sometimes that he’d had access to the kinds of information about sex and love and relationships that he’s always made sure his children had. Maybe then he wouldn’t have hesitated the way he did, not wanting to admit he was attracted to Jack, not wanting to take things further with Eve when he was so in love with Jack as well. (He’s not sure his teenage self could have handled knowing that having them both at once was a possibility).

In the end, he was so desperate not to have to choose he took off backpacking around the world, with no real intention of ever coming back, and by the time his fling with Talia had scared some sense into him, Eve and Eddie had an apartment together and Jack was spending so much time there Bruce wasn’t sure why he bothered having a place of his own. And then Eve had told him she was pregnant, that the three of them were having a child, and Bruce had been too heartbroken to do anything except smile and nod.

He’s had eighteen years to get over it, and he’s not heartbroken anymore, but he’s just as helpless in the face of Jack’s laughter and Eve’s wit as he ever was. Lex says it’s cute. (Lex is an asshole).

The the top of the stairs, Jack throws open the door to his studio with a flourish.

The sculpture is… “Are those cigarette butts?”

“And the empty packets from Ed’s antidepressants. Oh and look there - it’s the bottle from that brush-cleaner you tried to tell me was wine the last time you came to dinner. I’m thinking of calling it ‘studies in coping.’”

“You like brush-cleaner disguised as wine.”

“I do, but my adoring public don’t know that. What do you think, is it a winner or what?”

“I think it’s going to sell for a small fortune, especially with that name.”

Jack does make real art, painting mostly, and some of it is breathtaking, but he never sells or displays those pieces. He’s best known as a contemporary sculptor, but everyone who he’s not trying to scam knows that the real art isn’t the pieces, which he generally puts together in about two days with no actual care or attention, it’s the sale. Con artistry as performance art. The sort of thing only Jack could turn into a viable career.

Eve and Eddie are under instructions to show his real paintings just once, after his death. (None of them question the idea that Jack will be the first to go, even though he’s one of the most vital people Bruce has ever met). After they’ve done their job, exposed the long con, then they are to be distributed among his friends and enemies. Bruce knows he’s been left a portrait of Eve. He’s only seen it once, but it was the thing that convinced him that, for all his mood swings and anti-social behaviour, Jack really does love her.

There’s an easel in the corner of the room, covered with a cloth. Bruce glances to Jack for approval before pulling off the cloth to reveal a painting of Eddie, wearing pants and suspenders but no shirt, a bowler hat perched rakishly on his head. Like with the portrait of Eve, there’s a tenderness in the brushstrokes that Bruce has never known Jack to show in real life to anyone but Duella.

“This is good.”

“Eddie hates it.” Jack grins. “He says it proves I’m a pervert, as though that was ever in doubt.”

“He didn’t sit for it?”

“I can’t get him to pose dressed, never mind topless.”

“That’s impressive, to paint him from memory like that.”

Jack scoffs. “Knowing what my babydaddy looks like isn’t impressive. Especially when I see him every day.”

Bruce doesn’t bother arguing. “You never paint Duella.” Most of Jack’s real art is portraits, ranging from the tender to the downright cruel. There’s one of Bruce at eighteen in here somewhere, one of Lex in eyeliner and platforms, some horrible ones of various psychiatrists and social workers who’d tried to help Jack over the years. None of his daughter.

That earns him a rare totally sincere smile. “I sketch her all the time. In oils… I can’t get all three of us into her. She just ends up looking like me.”

Bruce feels mean for being surprised that that’s something which would bother Jack. He does love Eve and Eddie, it’s just that Bruce is pretty sure that the only person he’s ever loved more than he loves _himself_ is Duella. “She inherited a lot from you.”

“Too much, probably,” Jack says. All the manic energy from earlier has drained out of him, leaving him tired and worn down and older than Bruce has ever seen him look. “Eddie wants to get her assessed. Maybe medicated.”

“And Eve?”

“She agrees.”

“Maybe it’s for the best. You know my kids see therapists or psychiatrists. It’s helped all of them.”

“She inherited so much from me,” Jack says, staring down at his hands. “So if she can’t cope…”

“It doesn’t have to say anything about you. You hold down a job, you maintain fulfilling relationships.”

“I sell junk with fancy names to rich idiots and I only stopped self-medicating in the house because Eve threatened to sue for custody if I did. It’s funny, I used to like being like this. Even when I was sweating through the second withdrawal in a year or sleeping rough and mugging little rich boys to get money for paints, I liked it. Now I look at Duela and I can’t see any of the thrill.”

“We do better by our kids than people did by us. Isn’t that what every parent wants? We give them the things we never had.”

“Oh so that’s why Jason is sleeping with half the kids in school, Mr still a virgin at nineteen.”

Bruce ignores the jab. It wasn’t intended to hurt - Jack knows him well enough to do real damage if he wants to. “That’s why Eve and Eddie want Duela to get therapy.”

“Maybe. Hey, can I ask you something? If I didn’t have them, if you’d ever made a move when we were kids, would you trust me around your children?”

Bruce doesn’t say anything - there’s nothing good he can say.

Jack nods. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Give Eve the name of your kids shrink before you go. Anyone who can deal with those little monsters of yours is probably tough enough to stand up to Duela in a mood.”

Slowly, wary of any sudden movements that might provoke a violent reaction, Bruce pulls Jack into an embrace. “You’re a good father, J.”

“And you’re just as much of a sucker for a sob story as ever,” Jack replies, but he wraps his arms around Bruce and holds on tight, so Bruce is pretty sure that it had been reflexive meanness. “Don’t tell Lex I hugged you. It’ll ruin my reputation.”

“You have a kid, J, I’m pretty sure Lex already knows you hug sometimes.”

“No, he only suspects.” Jack hand slides down to grab Bruce’s ass, which Bruce takes as his queue to let go. Despite what his shirt says, Jack is loyal to Eve and Eddie. He only hits on Bruce as a defense mechanism these days. “You’re no fun anymore, you know that Brucie baby? I used to be able to get you blushing and stammering and rock hard by just looking at your ass.”

“We’re not teenagers anymore.” Thank God.

“The years start coming and they don’t stop coming.”

“Did you just quote Smashmouth at me?” Bruce only recognised it because Jason had changed the ringtone on every phone in the house to All-Star, during on of his periods of looking for non-violent ways to make Tim’s life hell.

“You ever wish we’d actually fucked once before we decided to grow up?” Jack asks instead of replying.

“Sometimes,” Bruce admits. “Not often. If we had, we never would have grown up.” He and Jack were bad for one another, Bruce was mature enough to admit that now. Jack would always be one of his dearest friends, he’d always be at least a little bit in love with him, but he knows he wouldn’t like the people they’d have turned one another into. He would never have moved on from his parents deaths, Jack would never have learned to reign in the worst of his violent impulses. They would probably have been happy, for at least a while, but they would have destroyed one another in the end.

“Growing up is overrated,” Jack says as he pulls away, but Bruce can hear that he doesn't mean it. “Come on, I want to be so shitfaced I can’t walk in these heels by the time Lex and Mercy show up, it’s the only way I can be around him without wanting to use his shiny bald head as a soccer ball.”


	12. Jason's intimidating until you find out he can quote most of Persuasion, and then he's even more intimidating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was having some gender feels today, and I realised that I'd never actually told anyone my trans batfam headcanon, and that seemed like as good a way to write my feelings at any.
> 
> Tim is favourite, now and forever, but I love the fuck out of Jason Peter Todd.
> 
> I have no idea how Dami's sexuality is going to shake out, and I'm not 100% clear on Duke's either so I figured I'd hedge my bets for now and wait to see if he told me more in future chapters.
> 
> Ulysses is Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong/the General. I have a real soft spot for the General as a character, especially as James Tynion wrote him. He was supposed to be Red Robin's Joker - this dark reflection of what Tim could become - and like the Joker, he just ended up coming accross as having a really intense crush he didn't know how to handle so he became a supervillain.

Duke really loves that he gets his own room. He hadn’t hated sharing in the group home, but as an only child he’s been used to having his own space. He’s still not entirely sure how he feels about living in a house that is big enough for seven kids to all have their own room and there still be guest rooms left over, but he’s not going to complain.

The fact that the other kids all think it’s fine to just wander in unannounced when he’s in bed on the other hand… (He’d asked Dick what they did about masturbation when they were all in and out of one another’s rooms all the time, and he’d said to just yell that you’d got your dick out the minute the door started to move, and Duke’s honestly not sure that he’s joking).

At least he’s in bed and wearing pyjamas this time - it’s only been a couple of days and he’s already had more than one conversation with Cass or Steph that started with “stop screaming Duke, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before...”. (To which Duke began by pointing out that that might be true but they haven’t seen _his_ before, but that argument already doesn’t work.

Even knowing he’s fully covered, it’s still instinctive to tug the sheets up to his chin when the door opens, and then he’s so confused by not immediately recognising the shape in the doorway that he forgets to say anything.

Whoever it is is tall, at least as tall as Dick, but with a definitely feminine silhouette, and given that Cass is Tim’s height and Steph’s only a few inches taller, he has no idea who is could be. Someone’s girlfriend? That Pru woman Tim hangs out with who Duke hasn’t met yet?

And then the figure in the doorway flicks on the light and he realises with a jolt that it’s Jason.

“Hey man, sorry to disturb you, I know you don’t like us all barging in…” He trails off when he notices that Duke is still staring like a creep. Not that he’s creeping, Jason’s his foster brother and he’s pretty sure that he’d have made it clear if he wanted Duke creeping on him, but he’s still just really confused, and Jason has tits, since when does Jason have tits?! “Guess you hadn’t figured out I’m trans, huh?”

“Um,” is all Duke can say.

Jason crosses his arms over his chest defensively. “You’re not going to be all weird about it are you?”

That’s enough to bring Duke to his senses. “No! No, fuck sorry, no I… I didn’t know? I mean, obviously I didn’t know or I wouldn’t be being such a freak. Sorry. I don’t care or anything, you just caught me by surprise. You’re like the manliest guy I’ve ever met.”

Jason laughs. “You obviously haven’t seen my bookshelves. But thanks. I got a lucky roll, genetically. Nature wanted me to be a tall hairy woman, turns out I’m a slightly taller than average dude instead.”

“This family is very gay.”

“We prefer queer, but yeah, we really are. What about you? Steph says she’s our token straight person but we all know she’s lying.”

“I… don’t know? I mean I’ve only really fancied girls, but I’m not like, opposed to the idea of liking a guy, you know?”

Jason laughs. “Not really. It’s hard to be Dick’s little wing and not know you’re queer. I mean, he’s my brother, but he’s also one of the most beautiful people on the planet, and he’s always been super supportive and kind. Some crushes are just inevitable.”

It’s not like Duke doesn’t get that. Dick is weird, but he’s also really great and really really handsome. “Do you still…”

“Nah, I got over that pretty quick. Like I said, he’s my brother. But by that time I’d met Roy and Kori, and when the universe is screaming at you that loud you just have to listen.”

Duke’s had the week off while he settles in before he starts school with the others, so he still hasn’t actually met the mythical Roy and Kori, but from the way Dick and Jason both talk about them (the fact that they’re sleeping with the same people really isn’t helping Duke calm the bit of his brain that’s still half convinced they’re in some kind of cult) they’ve got to be something special.

“What about Damian?”

“Too young to tell yet, but Alfred says he’s very like Bruce at that age, so whatever his thing turns out to be it’s going to be wild. Bruce has been in love like three times in his entire life, and he’s still in love with all of them, and when you tell him he should get over it he just stares at you like you’re talking Greek. Except that he speaks Greek. Bruce doesn’t really have an off switch for shit like that. Given how intense Dami is about everything, I figure he’s probably going to be the same way, and I am _not_ looking forward to his first breakup.”

Duke totally gets that - Damian is spectacularly bad at emotions - but he can’t help thinking it could be worse. “How’s Tim at breakups?”

Jason groans. “The _worst_ . And his exes are all _terrible_. This one guy he dated for like a week in Freshman year, Ulysses, is still so cut up over it that he keeps trying to get everyone Tim hits on expelled. He sent Conner K anonymous death threats for like half a semester and him and Tim aren’t even officially a thing. The only reason he didn’t get expelled is because they couldn’t 100% prove it was him, even though everyone knew it was.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. They only good thing is that he picked Conner, who’s pretty hard to intimidate and just didn’t care all that much, rather than one of Tim’s other friends.”

“So what I’m getting is that everyone at school is gay and crazy.”

“Not everyone. There’s also normal people, if you’re into that, but they mostly avoid the Waynes.” He buffs his nails on the front of his shirt. “Can’t imagine why.”

“You know what Steph would say now.”

Jason snickers. “Yeah I totally do. It’s not like we don’t know we’re a creepfest though, that’s got to count for something, right?”

“I don’t know, isn’t it worse if you know and do it anyway?”

“Secret to happiness, brother-mine. Figure out who you are and do it on purpose, even if who you are is really scary.”

“Good philosophy.”

“I stole it off Dolly Parton.” He laughs at Duke’s expression. “Told you I wasn’t all that masc. Speaking off, I actually came in to ask if you’ve seen my cock.”

“Your… cock?!”

“My packer. It’s got a life of its own I swear, and Damian is still poorly socialised enough that he hasn’t figured out that hiding it makes him look like the weirdo not me. Plus one time Titus stole my old one and buried it in the garden, and at the time it was the most mortifying thing to ever happen to any trans guy ever, but looking back it was pretty fucking hilarious.”

“I haven’t seen it, but if I find any unattached dicks i’ll let you know?”

“I feel like I should specify, given who else lives in this house, it’s a packer not a dildo, and it’s flesh tone. Anything erect, sparkly or ridged, not what I’m looking for and may not be mine.”

Duke could feel his face heating up with embarrassment. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

Jason grinned. “Don’t worry, according to Steph you get used to us eventually. Sleep well.”

“You too. I, ah, I hope you find your dick?”

“If I don’t I’ll just hold Damian over the banisters by his ankles until he tells me where he hid it. Night, bro!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are loved and appreciated, but I always feel that any fic with a trans headcanon in it needs to come with the caveat that if you're going to comment just to tell me that my headcanons are wrong or be transphobic I will just delete it so maybe don't bother.


	13. Duke's secret shame is his love of early-00s Lindsay Lohan movies (or it would be if he didn't keep telling everyone)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As warned last time, this update is going up out of order, because it refused to co-operate and be finished in a timely manner.
> 
> I have no idea where I got the idea that Cullen Row is canonically deaf, but I only realised after I'd finished the chapter that he isn't. But since this is my AU and I can do what I want with it, I decided to leave it is. We need more deaf and HOH comics characters anyway.
> 
>  
> 
> **Dramatis Personae**
> 
>  
> 
> Holly - _Holly Granger/Virtue. The Movement. Junior_  
>  Mouse - _Jayden Revell/Mouse. The Movement. Junior_  
>  Traci - _Traci Thirteen. Sophomore_  
>  Charlotte - _Charlotte Gadge-Radcliffe/Misfit. Bird of Prey. Freshman_  
>  Klarion - _Klarion Bleake/Klarion the Witchboy. Sophomore_  
>  the Vasquez family - _Billy Batson/Shazam & his foster family_  
> Cullen - _Cullen Row. Freshman_  
>  Anita - _Anita Fite/Empress. Young Justice. Sophomore_  
>  Lonnie - _Lonnie Machin/Anarky. Batman Villain. Sophomore_  
>  Cissie - _Suzanne King-Jones/Arrowette. Young Justice. Sophomore_

“So is this my mean girls moment?” Duke asks as he follows Steph into the cafeteria.

“On Wednesdays we wear black.” She grins at his snort of laughter. “This school's kinda weird, clique wise. It's one of the best schools in the country for athletics, and they really don't give a damn about football. We do have jocks, but they don't get to run shit, and half the cheerleaders are also in the drama club.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah. Took me a while to get used to it to be honest.”

“So you going to tell me who’re the burnouts and who’re the plastics?”

She laughs and points to a table in the middle of the room. “Dick and Jason’s crew. The redhead who’s practically in Jason’s lap is Roy Harper. He will hit on you every single time you speak to him, but he won’t be creepy about it so my advice is just learn to roll with it.

“The one who looks like Nancy Reagan got real into party drugs is Duela. She’s mostly good people, but she’s a bit… unhinged. It’s best to stay on her good side when you can, things can get real intense when she decides she doesn’t like someone.

“Mal and Karen are basically the nicest people in the school. She’s head of the cheerleading squad and the mathletes, he’s the only footballer we've got with a hope of going pro since Vic’s accident.

“Vic is the guy with the crutches. He was in a real bad car accident, a couple of years back. His left hand is prosthetic, I’m warning you because he will absolutely take it off just to freak you out the first time you meet him. The kid with the green hair is his boyfriend Gar. If you think you recognise him it’s because he was on this crappy sci-fi show for a couple of seasons. Him and Jason are both Juniors, but the rest of them are seniors and no one’s looking forward to them moping next year when all their friends have graduated.

“There’s also Wally, who’s head of the track team, and Donna who runs the GSA and is a shoe in for Valedictorian, they’re on second lunch period this semester.

“That table is the social justice warriors. I mean, we’re all pretty liberal but they’re the ones who actually organise protests and shit. Holly can get scary intense, and Mouse is just plain scary, but they’re good people.

“Conner H is the most beautiful person in the school except maybe Dick. Don’t hit on him, he’ll be so nice about turning you down you’ll never recover from the humiliation.

“That's the resident Satanists. Traci and Charlotte are mostly harmless, Lori’s nice enough and Lucius is sweet. But watch out for Klarion. He's unpredictable and he's got a really nasty streak.

“That’s the Vasquez family. They’re a foster family, like us, and there’s so many of them you will absolutely lose track. They’re nearly as culty as the Waynes, although there’s more prayer circles and less martial arts.

“Everyone else is pretty much what you’d except. Boys who don’t wash enough, girls who wash too much, stoners, the weird kids who are only friends because no one else wants them, the ones who think they’re cooler than everyone else. The usual.”

“And the best people I will ever meet?”

She grins at him and pulls him over the table where Cass is already sitting. “Behold! The best people you will ever meet. Everyone this is Duke, he’s our new foster-brother. Duke, this is everyone.

The person (no-one cis got an undercut like that in Duke’s admittedly limited experience) with an arm around Cass’s chair leant forward and offered him a hand to shake. “Hey, I’m Harper. My pronouns are they/them. Cass has been telling us all about you.”

Cass signs something Duke doesn’t know enough ASL to understand, and gives him one of her huge beaming smiles. He smiles back, because it’s impossible not to.

Steph kicks the kid sitting at the end of the table in the ankle until he shifts round, and she and Duke snag a couple of spare chairs from the next table and sit down.

“Cass tells me you do parkour,” Harper says. “You any good?”

“I’m not terrible.” He actually is pretty good, but it feels weird to just come out and say that.

“We’ll have to go running sometime.”

“Yeah? Sounds good. How long have you been doing it?”

“Oh, only a couple of years. Hey, you're in my brother Cullen’s class right? Skinny kid, with hearing aids.”

Duke shrugs. “I have no idea. It's gonna be like a week before I actually remember anyone's names.”

“Yeah that's fair. Hey have you everyone?”

Everyone turns out to be Anita (“she's the scariest person in the year except for Tim”), Cassie (“she looks nice but she'll totally Hulk out if you piss her off enough”), Lonnie (“never agree to do him any favours unless you like the idea of being charged with domestic terrorism”) and Cissie (“she can kill a man at a hundred paces and she only doesn’t because it would ruin her Olympic chances”).

“Hey can I ask you guys something?”

“Sure.”

“Why is everyone at this school so terrifying?”

Harper laughs. “Tragic backstories.”

“There's a couple of group homes in the school district,” Steph explains. “So we have loads of kids who don't have parents or who have unfit parents. Plus Principle Waller will take kids who've been expelled from other schools, so we have some kids from outside the district who've got some issues.”

“I heard Duela had been thrown out of three schools before this one.”

“Yeah well I heard that Axel burned down his last school.”

“Lori told me if Principle Waller hadn't agreed to take him, Klarion was going to have to go to military school.”

“God, even I wouldn't wish that on the military,” Lonnie says. “But just so you know, I'm one of Waller’s charity cases.”

“Tim kind of is too. He wasn't formally expelled, but after… that stuff I told you about... the Principle told Bruce if he didn't move him to another school he would be.” Steph sounds proud.

“So what did you do?” Anita asks, her eyes bright with interest.

“Lost my parents, went into foster care, had to change school districts.” Got arrested a time or three, did some community service, spent a month in juvie. He didn’t actually get expelled though, so that’s probably not relevant.

Harper pulls a face. “Yeah, that sucks. Me and Cullen have been in the system since we were pretty young. Not a lot of foster parents want a bisexual non-binary kid and their gay deaf brother.”

Duke hadn’t needed another reminder that he’s been lucky to find Bruce, but boy… “That sucks.”

Cass signs something, and Harper grins. “But then you’d be my sister and that would just be weird. Anyway, your dad is a creepfest.”

“Hey!” Steph and Duke say at the same time, and Cass makes an annoyed noise at the back of her throat, and then the three of them look at one another and all burst out laughing.

“He totally is,” Steph says, when she’s calmed down, “but you don’t get to say it until you’ve done 6am fencing practise with him.”

“It’s the rules,” Duke agrees. Bruce hadn’t made him or anything, but he’d been woken up by Damian getting up next door and followed them down to the gym to see what was going on, and once he was there he figured he might as well give it a try. Turns out fencing is way harder than it looks, but Bruce had said he showed promise. He’d felt pretty good about that until he watched Dick and Tim do their best Zoro impressions. Managing to parry a couple of strikes really doesn’t seem that impressive when you’ve seen Dick fence while hanging upside down from the chandelier.

“Yeah, but I’m an anarchist,” Lonnie says. “So fuck the rules. Bruce Wayne is a total creepfest, and you’re all in his cult.”

“I haven't started to learn to kill people,” Duke points out, “So I don't think I'd fully indoctrinated yet.”

“And Alfred hasn't taught him how to make his own explosives, or how to shoot, or anything.”

Duke turns to stare at Steph. “What?!”

Cass pats him on the shoulder and signs something.

“She says ‘give it time’,” Harper translates, and Cass grins like a demon at his horrified expression.

“Hey, I’ll take those lessons if you don’t want them,” Lonnie volunteers.

“Now you have to take them,” Steph says, “if only to save Lonnie from himself. Even Waller wont take him back if he gets charged with terrorism a second time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lonnie didn't get charged with domestic terrorism, he got a formal police _warning_ for suspected terrorist activities, because he's white and underage. He is still extremely pissed off about that.
> 
> Given that Jason's totally-not-boyfriend does competition shooting and his totally-not-grandfather is ex-SAS, it seemed reasonable that the civilian version of him also shoots.


	14. Someone tried to explain 'child endangerment' to Bruce once but he didn't believe them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much as I want him to be, comics Bruce really isn't a very good dad to anyone except Dami (and that's touch and go). But this is my AU and I can do what I want with it, so have some weird but dedicated Bat-dad looking out for Duke in his own unique way.
> 
> There were going to be a couple of other chapters before this one, but they didn't want to be written and this one did, so the next couple of updates may be out of order as I go back and fill in some gaps.

There’s a lot of great stuff about being fostered by Bruce. His room, Alfred’s cooking, foster-siblings who are determined to look out for him (in their own demented way). A school where he isn’t even close to being the biggest weirdo, or the student with the longest criminal record.

Some of it really sucks though.

Case in point - he knows he didn’t make a noise sneaking down the stairs. He knows because he’d done three dry runs, sneaking out of the front door and as far as the road before he turned around and went back to bed. Not once did anyone catch him. Not once did anyone hear him.

And yet somehow when Duke gets to the door, sneakers in one hand because socks make less noise, backpack in the other, Bruce is waiting for him.

“I was just…” Duke begins, and then trails off because there’s really no way to make this look any better than it is. “I was going to buy drugs?”

That gets him one of those weird little half smiles Bruce does, like he never learnt how to smile properly.

(Watching Bruce and Tim joke and play with one another makes the hair on the back of Duke’s neck stand up, because Bruce doesn’t know how to smile and Tim doesn’t make any noise when he laughs, and it’s like walking into the opening of a horror movie.)

“Alfred keeps an illegal stash of sleeping pills in the utensils drawer,” Bruce offers. “Will that suffice?”

He turns towards the kitchen, utterly confident that Duke will follow him, and Duke does because he has no idea what other options he has in this situation. He’s pretty sure he’s about to get kicked back to the group home, and he’s surprised how much it hurts. He’s only been here a few weeks, but he really likes this family, weirdness and all.

“Ah, was that a joke? Because it sounded like a joke, but this is Alfred so…”

“It was a joke,” Bruce assures him. “He keeps them in the pantry.”

Bruce’s sense of humour is warped and kind of rudimentary, but Duke knows him well enough to know that his favourite joke is gently skewering people with the unavoidable knowledge of just how bonkers-crazy he and his family are. Which almost certainly means that Alfred really does keep an illegal supply of prescription sleeping pills. “Why…?”

“Because he cares about all of you, and doesn’t like to watch you suffer if it can be avoided. If you have had a particularly trying day, it’s best to accept the cocoa and not think too much about it. There are few things not helped by a good night’s sleep.”

“You’re not going to drug me are you?” Duke asks nervously as Bruce gestures for him to take a seat at the kitchen island.

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Bruce says, agreeably. “I was going to make tea, but I can get you water if you’re concerned.”

“Tea is fine.” Honestly, Duke isn’t a big tea fan, but Bruce was raised by a patriotic Englishman, so he practically lives off the stuff.

“So you want to tell me about this drugs you’re so eager to purchase?” Bruce asks as he potters round the kitchen, making the tea.

“You know that isn’t really what I was doing, right?”

“I know. I thought I’d offer you the chance to lie about it again if you wanted though.”

“And you would have bought that?”

“Not for a second. But I’m not in the habit of prying into my children’s personal lives. You have only been here a short time, but you have proved yourself to be a level-headed and admirably sensible young man. Whatever it is you were doing tonight, and on the three separate occasions you have been formally charged with trespass or breaking and entering, and on the no-doubt numerous occasions in which you were merely reprimanded, or were not caught at all, I trust you enough to believe that it is important.” He brings the mugs over, leans on the island opposite Duke. “I want to help you, but I can only do that if you allow me too.”

“You aren’t going to tell me it’s dangerous?!”

“I have already said that I don’t think you’re an idiot Duke. I am sure that you know how dangerous it is. Racism is not the worst of the GCPD’s faults, thanks to Jim, but they are still armed police and you are still a young black man who keeps turning up in places he has no legal right to be. In this country, that story tends to end in one way, and it is not pleasant.”

“But you’re not going to stop me.”

“I am not your keeper, Duke. Some may regard that as a dereliction of my duties as your foster-father. Certainly I have asked myself the same question many times over the years. But in the end, it is the only way I know how to be a parent.”

Duke can’t stop himself from asking, “You know this is mad, right? Like, everything about your life and this family is objectively insane, but this is right at the top of the list. You’re supposed to be, I don’t know, grounding me. Yelling at me! Sending me back…”

“No.” Bruce’s voice is suddenly hard. “I have taken you into my home, and my family. I will never send you away.”

“Oh.” Duke doesn't know what to say to that. He hadn’t known Bruce cared so much, and it makes a hard lump of emotion well up in his chest to know that Bruce is prepared to take Duke's criminal record in stride the same he has Steph's attitude, or Jason's gender, or Tim's violent outbursts, or Damian's temper, or whatever Dick's damage is. “Uh, thanks?”

Bruce waves that away, like this is all no big deal. “I would like it if you were to tell me where you were going tonight.”

Duke stopped telling people after the first time he was arrested. No one ever believes him, and then they look at him like he’s crazy, or like he just hasn’t come to terms with the loss or whatever. But Bruce is an actual crazy person, so maybe… “They never found my parents bodies.”

“You think they’re still alive?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Probably not, but if there’s a chance… There’s hardly any missing people from the attack, is the thing. A lot of people died, but they identified just about everyone. Plus…” He pauses, unsure whether he should tell Bruce this bit, but there’s no pity in Bruce’s eyes. He’s listening with the same calm focus he always does, weighing up Duke’s words objectively, and not dismissing him. “I saw my mom. About a month after the crash. They hadn’t identified all the bodies then, and I believed them when they told me they were dead, that it was only a matter of time until they found them. I wasn't looking for survivors or anything, I just wanted to see… to see where it happened. I snuck in past the police tape, and I swear I saw her. I tried to follow but she was on the other side of the tracks, and by the time I got there she was gone. It was her though, it really was. Not just her face, but the way she moved, and she had burns on one side of her face like she'd been in an accident, and I think maybe she hit her head or something, otherwise she'd have come home, she'd have..." He rubs his knuckles against his eyes, trying to will back the tears he can feel forming. "It was her."

Bruce looks at him silently for a long minute, like he’s weighing up what Duke told him, and then he nods. “Wait here.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get changed. I’m not dressed for breaking and entering.”

“What?!”

“You can refuse if you really want to, but having a partner decreases the risk of injury significantly. Plus you’re much less likely to run into trouble with the police if you’re with a white millionaire.”

Duke still isn’t going to cry, even though this is probably the nicest thing anyone’s done for him since his parents went missing. No-one's ever believed him before. “Have you ever been free-running before?” he asks, in an effort to distract himself from how much he wants to burst into tears. "Rooftops are usually the easiest way to get in unseen."

“No. But I’ve climbed a few mountains, and I used to climb the manor when I was a child.”

The manor is certainly climbable, but it wouldn’t be easy, and that’s with the reach of a fifteen year old. “How young?”

“Ten? Possibly eleven.”

Given everything else he knows about Bruce, the fact that he was tall and strong enough to make the climb at ten really shouldn’t be surprising. Duke's seen his morning exercise routine, and watched him spar with Dick, and he knows how crazy fit he is. Apparently he’s also fearless, but again that really shouldn’t be surprising given how out of wack all of Bruce's other emotional reactions are. "Don’t you have work tomorrow though?” Bruce has Wednesdays off so he can take Dami to his therapy appointments (and catch him when he tries to escape out of the therapists window, which happened pretty regularly accordingly to Jason), so he works most Saturdays instead. Duke still isn't clear what a CEO actually does, but it's apparently a full time job.

“It certainly won’t be the first time I’ve shown up half asleep. And Tim can go in my place if we get arrested.” He says it without any particular inflection, like the prospect of being arrested just doesn’t bother him. Duke doesn’t know how much of that is being the kind of rich and white where the law doesn’t really apply, and how much is just Bruce’s general weirdness.

“Tim’s sixteen.”

“That’s never stopped him before.” Bruce gulps down the end of his tea. “I’ll only be a minute.”

Duke watches him go, and wonders if Mr Nelson had known this would happen, whether that’s why Duke’s here instead of a normal foster family, or whether getting placed with an actual crazy person was just Fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, Bruce absolutely is rich enough to mount an official organised search. No, that isn't going to occur to anyone in the family, because the Waynes are just like that.
> 
> The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed I've updated my name since the last time I posted. I'd been using sapphy since livejournal, back when I still identified as female, and it felt like time for a change. I've updated my tumblr so i'm jupitermelichios over there as well if you want to come say hi


	15. There is no greater rebellion than living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter is about someone dealing with and resisting the desire to self-harm. It also features a character with an eating disorder talking about some of their issues with food. If reading about that if likely to trigger you or give to urges to do something to harm yourself, _please_ do not read this chapter. It is totally stand-alone, and skipping it will not impact your ability to enjoy the story as a whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't, imo, dark, but it is more serious and in line with this, the title for this chapter isn't a joke. There is nothing more radical we can do than live. (Unless Jeff Bezzos is reading this - Jeff if you are, the most radical thing you could do is grow a moral backbone and do something with you money instead of just piling it up to sleep on like a pastey dragon). If you're struggling, there are free resources available - please don't think you have to do it alone.
> 
> I'm drawing on both pre & post 52 canon here - Doll and Lori/Alice appear in both. Their having a close friendship comes from pre-52, but their relative ages and Lori being fostered by the Elongated Man are from new-52. Lori being homeless is also new-52 canon.
> 
> Some notes about Ragdoll, since he's not a super well-known character:  
> Doll is canonically non-binary, and has made reference in multiple comics to surgically removing or altering his sex organs as a form of gender confirmation. The extent and nature of these alterations is unclear (because there's a limit to what you can discuss in a mainstream big-two comic) but seems to most often refer to an Orchiectamy - surgical removal of the testes - so that's what I've gone with here. I've also stuck with his preferred pronouns from the comics, which are he/him. Honestly my personal read has always been that he doesn't care what pronouns people use for him, because he doesn't care about other people's opinions all that much, and so he just uses the ones that require the least explanation.
> 
> Idk how good Doll would actually be as a support a during crisis, but he certainly wouldn't judge, and he's a character who means a huge amount to me as the first NB representation I ever saw in any form of media, so the idea of having him as support during a bad mental-health day is mostly just wish fulfilment on my part.
> 
> In comics, characters with distinctive ways of talking often use a different font in their speech bubbles - Thor in Marvel comics being a well known example. Ragdoll is one of these characters, but since AO3 doesn't support other fonts, I've gone with italicised text. It doesn't flow as naturally as comics fonts do, but it gets to impression accross well enough.

One of Lori’s top five favourite things about Ralph and Sue is how easily they've accepted her weird cobbled together family as their own.

 

She can text Doll from the bath that she needs him and know that they will let him in without saying a word about it, because she’d only needed to explain once that there was nothing sexual there for them to accept it.

 

She feels guilty for interrupting his day, however many times he insists he doesn’t mind, and even guiltier for still having bad days when there's so much good in her life, but Jeanette keeps telling her it doesn't work like that and she's usually right about that stuff.

 

She'd been thirteen when she met Doll. She was living on the streets after running away from a foster home, trying to convince herself not to go back, but it was getting harder and harder as the weather turned wintry.

 

He'd walked past the shop doorway she’d staked out for the night, and she'd tried not to stare but it was hard when he looked nothing like any person she'd ever met.

 

His long angular body and the strange slightly jerky way he moves had made it impossible to mentally pigeonhole him as male or female, and even from a distance his scars were visible. And so was his smile. He’d looked honestly happy, in a way she thought only people on TV ever did. 

 

He’d felt her staring, had come over and she’d been terrified, she’d learnt the hard way that being noticed was dangerous, but he hadn’t said anything creepy, or hit on her, or even given her the names of any charities. He’d just chatted. Asked her about what her favourite animal was, and whether she’d ever watched a wrestling match, and if black was her favourite colour. He’d told her about how his boyfriend was going to be a dad, and how conflicted he felt about that. He’d spoken to her like an equal, and it was the first time anyone had ever done that.

 

It was full dark by the time he left, and by that point she liked him enough that she’d almost been hoping he would offer her a bed for the night, even though she’d known how dangerous that was, but instead he’d scribbled his phone number on the back of a business card he’d stolen from his doctor and told her to call him if she needed help.

 

She hadn’t seen him again after that, but she’d thought about him a lot. Plenty of people were awful to homeless kids, but there had been kind people too. The folks who ran the soup kitchen down by the bus station, people who’d give her the cost of a hostel for the night rather than just pocket change. But that strange spindly person had been the first to talk to her like she was a normal person.

 

She tries not to think about the night she was mugged. It’s all too horrible and too real still, even four years later, but afterwards, when she’d been curled up on the pavement trying to find any position that lessened the pain from her ribs, she’d thought about the business card still tucked into her shirt where no one would find it, and she’d thought “even if he’s a creep, it’s got to be better than this,” and she’d asked the owner of a bodega who’d always been kind to her if she could use his phone. She’s pretty sure he was expecting her to call CPS, or her foster-parents, and she very nearly did. But in the end she called the number scribbled onto the business card.

 

A voice she didn’t know, with an accent she didn’t recognise, had answered the phone, and she’d realised that she had no idea what the strange spindly person was called, or even if they were male or female.

 

“Someone gave me this number,” she’d said, hoping the man who answered wouldn’t just hang up on her. “They said to call if I needed help.”

 

“This person was very thin, with no hair?” the man had asked.

 

“Yes! They didn’t give me a name.”

 

“His name is Ragdoll. Tell me where you are, we will come and get you.”

 

“Are you sure? I don’t want to be any trouble.”

 

“It is no trouble.”

 

She’d told them the address of the bodega, and nearly talked herself out of waiting five times before they actually arrived.

 

The man with the accent turned out to be the biggest person she had ever seen, with muscles on top of his muscles, but he looked at Doll so tenderly that she hadn’t been able to be afraid of him. And Doll had greeted her like an old friend, had seemed so genuinely happy to see her that she hadn’t been able to think of refusing when Bane bundled her into his car.

 

They’d stopped to get McDonalds from a drive through on the way back to their apartment, and she’d sat in the back of the car and listened to them bicker over Doll’s refusal to eat any of the fries Bane had bought him, and felt safe for the first time in  _ years _ .

 

She hadn’t wanted to see a doctor - the idea of being examined freaked her out, and the idea of Bane footing the bill freaked her out even more - but Bane had persuaded her to come to practise with him, and the on site nurse had looked her over and bound her ribs free of charge, with the kind of brisk professionalism that made it impossible to be afraid of her.

 

She’d lived with them for four months, getting to know their large extended family and falling in love with all of them, before she felt secure enough to let them introduce her to the foster parents they had found for her.

 

At first she hadn’t been able to imagine living with Ralph and Sue after her time with Doll, but then she’d watched them talk to Doll, and Kani, and Kay, and realised that even though they looked like the most boring conventional people in the world, they were actually very strange indeed.

 

“Of course you don’t have to live with us if you don’t want to dear,” Sue had said, smiling her perfect Betty Crocker smile. “But if we’re going to stop people asking too many questions, you’re definitely safer with the straight white cisgender people.” She winked. “If you look like you vote Republican, you can get away with anything.”

 

Leaving Doll had been a wrench, and so had saying goodbye to his pet monkeys, but she didn’t want to get him in any trouble, and like Sue said, people were a lot more likely to be suspicious of the non-binary contortionist and his brown pro-wrestling boyfriend than they were of the Dibneys. And even though she didn’t live with them anymore, she still saw Doll and his family loads, and when Barda was born everyone started calling Lori her cousin without even thinking about it.

 

She’d been pretty sure she wasn’t going to live to see fourteen, and now she’s sixteen, she’s doing good in school, she’s got this huge crazy loving family, she’s got friends, and when her brain decides to be an asshole and try and undermine all of that, she can text Doll and known he’ll always come. Even when she can’t make herself feel it, she knows she’s lucky.

 

That doesn’t stop her past fucking with her, or keep her brain from dropping her right back into the bad times at the worst moments. Klarion is at least used to her freaking out on him, but in some ways that makes it  _ worse _ . Her friends shouldn't have to be used to her having flashbacks for no good fucking reason. She should be able to get through a day without some stupid  _ tiny  _ thing reminding her of all the shit she wants to forget. She should be  _ able _ ...

 

Doll interrupts her spiral by pushing open the bathroom door without bothering to knock. He’s seen her in much worse states than this, and she knows he won’t read anything sexual into the situation. 

 

“ _ You okay, sugarplum _ ?”

 

“Been better,” she says, and holds up the razor-blade she’s been holding since she got home from school.

 

“ _ You use it yet _ ?”

 

“No.”

 

“ _ Mind if I get in _ ?”

 

She shrugs, and Doll strips out of his clothes so quickly and efficiently that there isn’t time for it to feel weird, and slips into the bath to sit opposite her.

 

Her eyes slip down to his dick, small and soft and strangely naked with no pubic hair and no balls, but they’ve done this often enough that he knows it’s only curiosity, not anything sexual, and he doesn’t mind. He’s more comfortable in his own skin than anyone she knows except maybe Thomas, and it’s one of the things she loves about him. Society insists his double jointedness is creepy, and his scars are ugly, and his being non-binary is stupid, but Doll doesn’t care one bit.

 

“ _ I ate an entire sweet potato yesterday _ ,” he tells her. “ _ And the big man barely had to force me at all _ .”

 

She doesn’t know if Doll’s ever had an eating disorder diagnosis, but it’s pretty clear to anyone who knows him that he’s anorexic. She thinks it’s probably a control thing, since he seems so generally happy with his body, but she’s never asked.

 

“That’s great.”

 

“ _ Thomas told Scandal I’d skipped a few little meals, and now Kay keeps turning up at practise with the most awful ‘snacks’. Have you ever had a  _ **_lunchable_ ** ?” He shudders at the memory, and despite how crap she’s feeling, she can’t help grinning at the mental imagine. Kay in her purple lycra unitard trying to hold on to a squirming Doll still long enough to feed him processed ham and crackers.

 

“They’re gross.”

 

“ _ The grossest. Bane promised to call her off, but only if I consumed an entire baked potato _ .”

 

“Guess he’s sleeping on the couch, huh?”

 

“ _ He’s sleeping on  _ **_Scandal’s_ ** _ couch. I’m not letting him back in the apartment until he apologises, and he’ll have to give in soon because I have all his spare uniforms _ .”

 

“Like he wouldn't just turn up to practise naked.” She's seen all her family naked except Kani and Mary, and she doesn't know if it's a wrestling thing or if they're just weird, but none of them seem to care. “What if he turns up to practise naked, and you still haven’t forgiven him, and then you’ll have to pretend you don’t think he’s hot.”

 

“ _ There is such a thing as a hate fuck you know dear. _ ”

 

“If you forgive him, I’ll give you this.” She gestures with the razor blade she’s still holding, and Doll frowns at her.

 

“ _ We’ve had this conversation, muffin. You can’t put your recovery onto someone else. You have to want it _ .”

 

“That’s rich coming from you.”

 

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her until she feels her cheeks heat with embarrassment. “Sorry.”

 

“ _ You’re not cornered _ ,” he tells her. “ _ You don’t need to lash out. If you want to use that I’ll stay right here and I won’t stop you. But I don’t think you called me here because you wanted to do it, did you _ ?”

 

She does want it, but she doesn’t want the part of her that wants it. She wants to get better, and she knows that even if it makes her feel better in the short term, cutting isn’t any kind of healing. The real reason she needed Doll here isn’t because he’d stop her, because she knows he’d never stop anyone doing what they wanted no matter how self-destructive, but because having someone else there reminds her that she’s accountable to  _ herself _ .

 

Jeanette told her once that self-destruction is just playing into what the patriarchy wants. The  _ true  _ act of rebellion against a world full of things like sexism, and homophobia, and homeless teenagers is self-love. That living out loud is a bigger fuck-you to the system than self-hatred could ever be.

 

“There’s a red sharpie, in the bag by the sink.”

 

He stands up, unashamed of his nudity and uncaring that he’s dripping water all over the floor, and retrieves the pen for her.

 

It takes her a long moment to swap him the razor for the pen, her instincts warring against themselves, but she manages it. With shaking fingers she marks out the lines she would have cut, the red ink stark against her skin, and it’s not the same but there’s a different kind of relief to it. Cutting had brought temporary relief, but it had also made her feel small and helpless and very alone, had reinforced all the feelings that had made her want to cut in the first place. Looking down at the lines of ink she doesn’t hurt any less than before, but she also doesn’t feel helpless. She feels like she’s exactly as strong as Ralph and Scandal and Bane and all the other people who love her think she is.

 

It’s a good feeling.

 

“ _ Want me to wash your hair _ ?” Doll asks, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  
She nods, and turns around to give him room, but before he begins he presses his forehead to her hair and says very softly, “ _ I’m proud of you, pumpkin _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments really do mean the world to me.
> 
> If you want to hang out on social media, you can find me on tumblr and pillowfort as jupitermelichios - I only signed up to pillowfort today so it would be cool to meet some people on there
> 
> Resources like S.A.F.E Alternatives in the USA, and Mind & Samaritans in the UK are freely available and there for you. Stay safe friendos.
> 
> We'll have something up-beat next time. Promise.

**Author's Note:**

> This is honestly just whatever weird ideas pop into my head, so if you wanna send me prompts/questions feel free!
> 
> If you enjoyed this please leave a comment, they really are what keeps people like me creating stuff like this


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